School samplers and other styles of sampler.

Two very old school samplers cc mid 19th century. One has a few stitches done.

Three Semco sampler kits.  Cross stitch design printed on calico.

A friend gave this to me.  Her grandmother used to mind this little girl, but that's all the family knows about it.  It is sewn on to perforated paper, not linen.

Various items.

Embroidery of the Lyre Bird is complete, but it has not been made up into a cushion, or framed.



This could be framed, or hung on a wall as is.






Patriotic doiley to commemorate Elizabeth II's first visit here.



Un-worked aprons

Two more koala designs

These two are Miss Australia designs.  There were a few different Miss Australia aprons, but unfortunately no dates were printed on any of them, so it is a guessing game to figure out which year if any, the girls represented.

Aprons.

Can you see the spelling error?  I am shocked that not only Semco spelt 'souvenir' incorrectly on the transfer pattern, but the person who stitched this didn't fix it up either! 

This apron just needs one pocket re-stitched.  Otherwise, a nice souvenir of the opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge.

How old would this design be - 1940's possibly?

Two variations of kookaburra designs for aprons.

Semco novelty designs - table cloths.

Semco produced a large range of linens in the category of 'novelty designs'. Some of them used images from countries around the world such as these cloths with a Mexican flavour. Semco's kits included machine-made crocheted edge for the cloths, but some people chose to hand crochet their cloths, with remarkable differences in the style of crochet, as you can see on these two cloths. If readers of this blog can identify any of these patterns as not being Semco designs, I would greatly appreciate your comments at the end of these posts!





Dutch theme.


Ponies and horses were a popular novelty design.



American Indians.

Sailing ships.

Table cloths..

This supper cloth is a Semco design. It was stitched by a lady in NSW who had three daughters, and kept them supplied in hand embroidered linens all her life. They ended up with so much, one daughter sold some of hers on eBay which is where I found this. She told me her mother was about 83 when she worked this cloth, and could still sew beautifully.

I bought this on eBay from a lady in Western Australia. Stunning embroidered Australian wildflowers.

A souvenir of Queen Elizabeth's first visit to Australia in 1954.

Another souvenir cloth to celebrate the Queen's coronation.

Budgerigars.

More budgerigars. Ever the purist, my husband commented that the colours are all wrong. My response is that like any artist, embroiderers create their own impressions of a subject.

Birds and animals were a very popular theme on linens in the early to mid 20th century. This cloth is unusual in that it combines cross stitched parrots with the foliage worked in other embroidery stitches.

Blue Wrens, Semco design.

Koalas, Semco design.