For as long as people have picked up needle and thread, they’ve used stitches to tell stories. From moral lessons to family records to scenes of daily life, embroidery has always been more than decoration — it’s a way to capture meaning in fabric.
Embroidery has long carried its own storytelling tradition:
Samplers weren’t only for practice, but often for recording lessons, memories, and even scenes that read like illustrated pages.
A very brief history of embroidery used for both storytelling AND story-keeping
Moral Lessons
Alphabets were stitched alongside Bible verses, with imagery evoking stories like Adam & Eve, Noah’s Ark, or The Good Shepherd. These moral tales were meant to be remembered and retold, and a stitched record helped fix them in memory.
Family & home records
Stitchers sometimes worked in family trees, names, dates, and even stitched replicas of houses and gardens to preserve personal history.
Storybook-like scenes
By the 18th and 19th centuries, some samplers contained stitched pictorial narratives–parades of figures, scenes of daily life, or multiple vignettes across the cloth. Historians sometimes call these pictorial or narrative samplers because they read almost like illustrated storybooks.
Naturalist collections
Others mirrored the format of field guides, arranging rows of stitched plants, moths, or birds–blending recordkeeping with decorative art.
Storytelling is at the heart of Stitched Stories designs
That tradition of stitching as storytelling is what inspired the name of my business–Stitched Stories. Many of my kits are in that spirit, evoking storybooks and life stories you’ll want to stitch into fabric.
Here are a few designs that bring storytelling to the hoop:
A row of canal houses, a cuckoo clock evoking the Black Forest, a mind spilling over with creative wonder. On the Canal, Create, and Cuckoo Clock are packed with fun-to-stitch motifs in bright colors that bring storybook charm to embroidered pieces.
A dozing cat, blossoms pieced together like a patchwork bedspread, squares filled with patterns that feel collected over time. Catnap and Patchwork capture the rhythms–and comfort–of daily life.
Apothecary jars brimming with secrets, moths pinned like a collector’s notes—Potions Pantry and Moths stitch up like a grimoire or field journal of curiosities.
Inspired by motifs from centuries past, Peacock Dreams and Jacobean let you stitch peacocks, crowns, and florals that echo eras of ornamental storytelling. Peacocks became a sensation in Victorian England after their introduction from Asia, fueling fascination with exotic tales and imagery. The Pynchon quote works to capture that feeling: Dream tonight of peacock tails, diamond fields and spouter whales.
The sea has always been a rich source of storytelling. Seaside Sampler has you stitch a village scene that flows into fish, sailboats, and a lighthouse. Snowy Owl Grove offers a wintry tale with owls standing sentry over cottages surrounded by snowflakes and windy swirls.
A pair of squirrels, a rogues’ gallery of woodland animals, mushrooms under fiddlehead ferns–Squirrels & Acorns, Rogues’ Gallery, and Mushrooms are filled with motifs that feel like folklore stitched in thread.
With these designs, your stitches can tell a story–sometimes whimsical, sometimes wise, always relaxing to work on.
Where folk tradition meets woodland storytelling...
Stitch woodland myths, naturalist wonders and folk-art tales. These kits offers absorbing details, heirloom-quality motifs, and a narrative that unfolds in your hands.
