This post was originally in XStitch Magazine Issue 28: Home, and has been adapted.
When it comes to cross stitch, we owe much of our existence to other hobbies. Be that threads from sewing, samplers from embroidery, or fabric from coffee growing.
But there is one thing that is truly cross stitch’s own; the home sweet home sampler. For some reason, despite falling into the collective creative zeitgeist, this simple sampler hasn’t fallen into other hobbies.
You know, for sure that whenever you see those three simple words, it’s cross stitch.
Thanks to this you see these samplers on walls of homes in soaps, TV dramas, or movies. You see them riffed on in animated shows like Futurama. And you see them reproduced in hundreds of different styles in modern cross stitch patterns.
But why are these words sampled at all? And why is it only cross stitch?
As with every cross stitch story, we start with something completely unrelated to the hobby at all.
Inexplicitly, the opera houses of the 1800s and cross stitch have a lot in common. Firstly, the name of our fabric, aida, is said to have come from the tragic opera of the same name, after Verdi’s work swept Italy. Fabric makers, embroiderers, and artisans seemingly changed the name from Java Cloth to Aida Cloth 2 years after it was released, although, to this day, no one knows why.
But another Italian opera, slightly earlier than Aida also has connections to cross stitch. The Maid of Milan (as it’s commonly known in English) or Clari is an opera from 1828, which whilst being liked, struggled to gain much traction, with its last performance in 1830.
But this opera did have one thing going for it; a hit song “Home! Sweet Home!”. This song somehow managed to become the best-selling song of 1839, with over 100,000 copies sold (a true marvel for the time), despite the opera’s less-than-impressive run.
Sadly for the original artists, John Howard Payne and Henry Bishop, contracts weren’t written with the authors in mind, and all the money from the song sales ended up in the pockets of the publishers. Whilst Payne was known for his lack of business sense, Bishop decided to take action and relaunched the song as a parlor ballad in 1852.
Bare with me here, as cross stitch does appear in a second!
As many of you will know, the late 1800s were a massive time for the American continent, with parlors becoming a major pastime for ailing workers.
By the time the American Civil War broke out in 1861, it was known as a classic song, with soldiers on both sides pining for home it became a popular song sung to keep morale up (although the Union army did ban the song at one point to stem desertion).
Thankfully, this is where cross stitch appears!
We’ve mentioned in a previous issue about the massive impact on embroidery that cheap German wool exports had, decreasing the price of thread and increasing the prevalence of cross stitch in England. But this also had a massive impact on the American shores, where cross stitch was only just starting to take off.
Plagued with a lack of manpower due to the war, and a lack of formal services, including education from the new government, many women moved to less formal ways of learning. One of these was embroidery; which taught both hand-eye coordination, but also spelling.
Initially, a lot of these samplers were focused on god, America, and home for obvious reasons, with statements like “God bless this house” coming from this period. But with more and more soldiers returning from the front, they brought back with them the songs that kept them strong.
‘Home! Sweet Home!’ was quickly adopted as a common phrase for a series of things at this time. In fact, the famous “There’s no place like home’ from The Wizard Of Oz also comes from this song. However, in addition, they also took the title (which doesn’t actually feature in the song) and cross stitched it up.
As the new United States of America recovered from the war, and connections with England improved, samplers came over from the US, and in turn, the phrase was incorporated into English cross stitch samplers too, even if they didn’t quite know why (the song was never as popular in England).
However, whilst cross stitch was seen at this time as a “people’s hobby” other embroidery was seen as a higher-class affair, and American embroidery was seen as shoddy, and not worth importing.
Therefore, whilst “Home Sweet Home” had become a unified sampler statement across embroidery, it was only cross stitch that managed to hold onto the term.
As cross stitch went through one of its many periods of quiet, and as new phrases came into fashion, and the breakout of World War I came, cross stitch fell aside. The next time cross stitch became really popular was the 1960s, in fact during this time cross stitch was the most popular it’s ever been, and they took old samples and cross stitched them, giving them modern twists and art. But the phrase “home sweet home” remained. In fact, during the newest cross stitch revolution in the 2000s, this was also the case with many people combining it with other media to create things like the Pokemon Home Sweet Home cross stitch.
By this time the phrase was simply associated with cross stitch, with all connection to other embroidery, and its original meaning was lost. But that didn’t stop people from taking the phrase and making it their own. It’s now an indistinguishable part of cross stitch culture and almost a rite of passage for stitchers and designers alike.
Happy stitching!
Lord Libidan