Easter and birth samplers

I was catching up on some blog-reading today and on Jo's blog she was talking about birth samplers she has completed. So here goes with some of mine. (WARNING - picture heavy post!) And I'm sorry about the quality of some of these photos - they are rather old!! And some have been scanned in from original prints as I no longer have access to them all!

 Obviously first has to be my own daughter's sampler. It was after all the one that started me on my cross stitch journey. Stitched on linen, with one strand of thread, patterns gathered from various sources to my own design. 

This was the next one I stitched - for friends of my husband. 

These next two were stitched for a friend's first two grand-children. The first is "Bluebirds for baby" and the second is from a book of Mother goose designs. 

Now this one started a whole series which I designed myself from a variety of images. I worked in a large library, and when one of the staff became pregnant I thought it would be a lovely idea to design a birth sampler for her. Several other colleagues volunteered to stitch out a motif, so it became a kind of round robin! When all the main motifs were done I took it round most of the rest of the staff, inviting them (or twisting their arms!) to put a couple of stitches in - even caretakers had a go! Then as a finishing touch I put everyone's names around the sides.

This one design spawned more and more - not just birth samplers but wedding ones too for other colleagues. I continued doing these until I retired. (More of them perhaps in another post!)

Friends too had their babies - 

 

and of course my own dear Jessica came along - my grand-daughter who is now approaching her third birthday - 

At Easter time we seem to hear of more babies being expected. But at the moment it's all quiet on that front as far as I can see. Hopefully I'll get some more of my own work done before I need to start searching out baby patterns again. But if anyone has heard of a new arrival recently, I pass along CONGRATULATIONS!

Until next time when I'll try to fit in some photos of what I've been up to recently!!

Sandie