AUGUSTA BRONNER 1898 – PDF Pattern

Augusta Bronner’s sampler is by no means unique – but there’s a charm in the simplicity of a red schoolhouse sampler that is just irresistable to me. I purchased this one from a seller in France. Due to school reforms in many countries it became mandatory for girls to be taught useful needlecrafts in school. One result of this was a more ubiquitous looking red school sampler which pushed out the more traditional samplers of the past.

I love that this sampler is a true learner sampler – it starts with simple running stitch and backstitches, followed by a simple cross-stitch that jumps, with bigger jumps and more complex borders. This taught the young stitcher to count her crosses and follow a simple pattern. Once the basic stitches were done, a simple alphabet would follow. This is here followed by more complex and decorative alphabets after which the stitcher stitched her name.

CHART DETAILS

The pattern is split over 4 pages. From the 2nd page on you will notice that the chart has greyed out areas of three crosses wide and/ or high: this indicates an overlapping area from the previous page. It’s there to help you find the starting point to continue your work.

This design measures 148 crosses wide and 154 crosses high. It has a total of 6173 crosses. If you stitch it on 32 count, it will measure approximately 71/2” by 75/8″ (18. 8 x 19. 6 cm). If you are stitching with 2 pulled strands over 2, you can stitch approximately 2000 crosses per 8 metre skein of 6-stranded floss. This means you will require approximately 4 skeins of DMC. The original fabric colour of this sampler is very close to ‘cream’ by Zweigart (no. 222). Both DMC 347 and 816 are very close to the colour of the original floss colour: 816 is slightly more wine red, whilst 347 moves a little more to the orange range of reds.

The first line on the sampler is a simple running stitch (over 2 threads on the front, over 2 threads at the back etc). The 2nd line is a backstitch (so worked from left to right, start by stitching over 2 threads to the left on the front, move 4 threads to the right at the back and come back up again, and repeat). The third line of these stitches is worked as a backstitch, but this time at the back go back 6 threads and jump 2 threads back.

I have included some empty grid pages on the next page so you can personalise your chart. You can choose to make the chart fully square: instead of leaving a 7 cross high gap below the bottom border and the outline, just leave 1 cross and the design will be exactly 148 x 148.

PLEASE NOTE: This design is available immediately after purchase. If you do not receive a confirmation email with download links, please check if it has gone to your spam folder.