The Wedding Sampler

 

A couple of days ago Facebook Memories threw up this image of the sampler I made for the God-daughter’s wedding.

The Squireen and I were flatmates for a number of years until she went to live with her then fiancé.  I was a bridesmaid at their wedding and then was delighted to be asked to be godmother to their firstborn.

I remember visiting the Squireen shortly after my first husband Phil died.

The God-daughter toddled up and asked 

“Has somebody died in your house?”

Her mother was horrified but the three year old’s question was so innocently and honestly put that I couldn’t be upset.

“Yes darling, Phil was very very poorly bad and he died.”

I was a pretty much hands off godmother, although I did make sure she had a book about becoming a woman and how babies are made (things my mother never told me).

It’s nice to have someone to pass onto things which my boys would never treasure.   

For example as a wedding gift Phil and I were given sets of glasses engraved with musical instruments.  I regifted these to her on her eighteenth and twenty-first birthdays.

When I learnt she was to be married I decided to make a sampler and bought a pre-transferred cloth from the haberdashery in the Grainger Market.  It was all hearts and flowers but I decided to personalise it with musical staves as both the God-daughter and her fiancé/husband are musicians.  The staves also make excellent guidelines for the letters of their names, and the treble and bass clefs. 

That summer I had a chest infection which meant I had to sit and rest a lot; possibly a good thing because I spent the time stitching and I’m not sure I’d have finished it in time otherwise.

The original transfer pattern included a strange sort of blossom tree at the bottom.   

I extended this to make that rather sinister penguin. 

Her mother and I have been exchanging penguins since the Falklands Crisis, but that’s another story (which you can find here https://bentonbag.blogspot.com/2016/05/penguin-history.html).

The God-daughter tells me the sampler is now hanging up in their dining room.