Giving a Sampler New Life

 About 4 years ago we bought a sampler from our local car boot - 'you will be able to clean that up' said my dearest!

As you can see there were a lot of 'foxing' type marks in the fabric. It sat on the floor in our bedroom behind a pile of other pictures we had no room for, for about a year before I plucked up courage to open it up. Unfortunately Jane had neglected to add the date to her sampler so the only clue we have to it's age is from the framers label on the back and the 1817 scribbled on the bottom.

The frame was not meant to be opened with ease!

When I had prized off the back board I discovered that it originally had a different purpose.

And then the next problem revealed itself.

The picture was tacked to the frame with tiny and well embedded tacks which were never going to come out without damaging the fabric. I put it all back together and back against the wall it went!

However it was nice to get some close up pictures without the glass and to admire the tiny stitches. They are by no means perfect - not all the arms cross in the same direction! But there are 24 crosses to the inch so they are tiny tiny. You can also see that the fabric has discoloured and I wanted to be able to clean it up which I could not do when it was on the frame.

So eventually I plucked up some courage and cut it away! I knew that I was going to end up losing some of the stitches when it was reframed but it was either that or spending the rest of it's life against the wall. 

The linen fabric was very fine and so I thought - I will loosly tack it to a backing fabric to stabilise it while I clean. Not a good idea as the linen shrank when I put it in water and I had to do a rapid bit of unpicking! Anyway, I made a shallow bath of Retro clean and laid in. It did a marvellous job and removed a lot of the staining, seemingly without doing any damage other than the shrinking. I rinsed it well, patted dry in a towel and left to dry flat. I then re-tacked it to the backing fabric so that I could stretch it over card to frame it again.

And here she is!

And framed although it's difficult to get a picture without reflections sadly.

I am happy with how it has turned out and will soon be finding it a special place on the wall.

We have not been able to trace Jane Cole sadly and the picture framer's no longer exist although there is still a framing gallery at 20 High Street, Beckenham and I had a very nice reply from the current owner. Sadly she was unable to give me any helpful information. We shall continue to search though.