FINISHED NEEDLEWORK: "Kansas City Historic Sampler Guild" smalls set

 Back in the late 1990s, early 2000s, Kansas City had a sampler guild.   Modeled on the Swan Guild in Utah and a similar guild in Atlanta, it is now very sadly defunct.  I was a founding member and on the board (treasurer) for the years it was in existence.  

One of the lovely ladies who was a fellow officer and founding member, Meredith Rosenblum, was also a talented designer and she did several exclusive designs for the guild and for at least one of the local shops.   The smalls in this set are either her designs or modified from them. 

Those smalls are housed in a collectible tin from Whitman's chocolates.  The "Whitman Sampler" has been marketed in a 'Needlework Sampler theme' box since 1910.  Russell Stover, the parent company, was headquartered in Kansas City at the time the guild was in existence. (Both Whitman and Russell Stover brands are now owned by a Swiss company - as of 2014).  Meredith used both the Whitman Sampler box and the KC Plaza Historic Shopping Center as ongoing themes in her designs.

The first design was a sweetbag name tag with two of the Plaza buildings and a fountain in a stylized layout that you also see on the Plaza Sweetbag (designed by Meredith).  I extracted the little fountain and the queen stitch flowers for the other smalls in the set.

The interior of the box is lined in a calico that evokes the turn of the last century with navy, medium blue and white flowers on a dusty blue background.  This calico also lines the sweetbag and provides the backing for several of the smalls.  The banding on the sides of the interior is taken directly from the Whitman box design border.   

Starting at the center top of the box, moving clockwise:  notebook (list of finishes from January of 2000 up to the point where I started this blog in the summer of 2017), thimble bag, an antique mother of pearl pocket knife (was my grandmother's), a pin disk, a wood and brass case for holding bent or broken pins and needles for disposal, emery strawberry, the new tape measure case, scissor fob (sheath is black), needle book, ort tin.  There's also a mechanical pencil (blue to match the notebook) and an antique lace crochet hook in there (for fixing thread ends and to use as a laying tool).

 The ort tin is made of a 'mini' Whitman Sampler tin that held four chocolates.  This is, I believe, the only one of this set that wasn't designed by Meredith or modified from one of her designs.  In my notebook, it says this one was designed by Ellen Chester.  Inside the banding is again the Whitman tin border, this time over one with a sampler style alphabet and the base has motifs extracted from the larger tin.

The final piece of this set, of course, is the KC Plaza Sewing Bag that is a current WIP.  I hope to be able to adjust my mock up to be able to have this box sit flat in the bottom of that bag.  The first stab at it had the base just a little too square and too small, but that's a fairly easy fix. I do have enough of the calico to do at least a partial lining, maybe pockets around the interior.

And now for the last of the actual smalls.  For many years, there was a 'naked' tape measure with just a tassel showing that it belonged to this set;  that is now fixed!  I did the tiny amount of stitching that this needed back in December, and got it all assembled this week. 

 Hope you liked this look at another 'set' of my smalls.