Emma’s pretty sampler is available as a printed booklet and as a PDF download. Click HERE for the PDF download.
We are pleased to present to you this charming sampler worked by Emma Wright in 1904 when she was 9 years old. There were many Emma Wrights born in England in the year 1895 so we are not able to pinpoint our Emma with any certainty.
Emma’s sampler is filled with flowers and bright, pretty colours. This young girl’s needlework conveys beauty in ways that are both subtle and profound. Beauty through simplicity relies on balance: the ability to reduce without losing meaning and to present something so clear that it feels inevitable. By stripping away excess, simplicity honours the essential and invites the eye and the heart to rest. It reminds us that beauty does not always need grandeur; often, it is found in the quiet presence of what is simple. Children carry within them an extraordinary gift: the ability to see the world not as it is, but as it could be. Ultimately, a child’s creativity is a reminder to all of us. It teaches us to look again, to play again, to believe again.
Emma most probably worked her sampler in the schoolroom. She was born at a time when girls found themselves at the intersection of two powerful currents of the late Victorian era: an increasing societal interest in formal schooling for girls and persistent cultural expectations that shaped what that schooling could and should accomplish.
Social class strongly conditioned the value of a girl’s schooling. Middle-class families sought refinement and employability; working-class girls might attend elementary and industrial schools designed to impart basic skills for domestic service or factory work.
Needlework in the Victorian and Edwardian classrooms was more than domestic training: it was a structured subject that linked practical skills, literacy, moral formation and social identity. Teachers used samplers, repetition, and modelled behaviours to instil dexterity and discipline; schools displayed their pupils’ work to certify achievement and attract support. While needlework reinforced gendered roles, it also offered girls a durable skill, a medium for creativity, and an archival footprint – samplers – which keep their voices alive to historians and the public today.
Today we remember Emma and celebrate her creativity and needlework skills.
Emma’s sampler has been reproduced using a palette of 13 colours from Au Ver à Soie’s range of Soie 100.3. We have provided conversions for Soie d’Alger (SDA) and DMC. You will only require one spool or skein of each colour.
The sampler is worked mainly in cross stitch over two threads of linen with the verse worked in back stitch over two threads of linen. The sampler is rated as being suitable for needleworkers of all abilities and can be stitched on Aida or linen.
