Once a month a group of ladies get together to preserve what young girls once did to learn the alphabet.
The Birtwistle Sampler Guild was created in 2003 to preserve the history of samplers and to create new pieces.
The sampler guild began with a group of cross stitchers loyal to Counted Stitches on Edgefield Road. They chose to name their group after Isabella Birtwistle who lived in North Augusta and has a sampler from 1830 on display at the Augusta Museum of History.
Guild President Pam Schmidt said samplers serve a historical purpose in which they tell a story about the person who stitched it and the time period.
"Samplers were done by young children quite often to teach them to learn to do their stitches, to learn the alphabet, to be able to read," Schmidt said.
Samplers contain motifs, verses and the alphabet, stitched on linen fabric with thread, she said.
"In the 1700s they did this as a necessity," she said. "They needed to learn their alphabet and paper was scarce so they used what they had which was silk and linen to stitch."
Household linens were great family possessions back then, she said, as they were created by hand from a crop planted on the farm.
"Table cloths and bed hangings and bed linens were passed down from one generation to the next because they were precious and that would tell who it belonged to," she said.
The sampler, Schmidt said, would have been like the girl's high school diploma, showing prospective husbands whether or not she had the skills to make a good wife.
Schmidt said that sampler making ceased in the 1850s when paper was more available, but that it was revived in the 1920s and again in the 1970s. As a result of weather, war and bugs, Schmidt said original samplers from the south are not as available as those in the north.
Creating a sampler could have taken six months or longer, Schmidt said. For her group of ladies, it can take a year or longer.
"There's a fellowship among people who have like interests," said Nancy Bailey, guild member and co-owner of Counted Stitches. "We all love stitching. We like samplers. And when you put the two together that's a double benefit."
Bailey said it's fascinating to start with a blank piece of fabric with nothing on it and watch a design grow as it's stitched.
"There are some people who say they couldn't do it, (that) it would drive them crazy, but God made us all different and for the majority of us it's therapy," Bailey said. "I'd go crazy if I couldn't do it."
Reach Crystal Garcia at crystal.garcia@northaugustatoday.com.
