From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
This afternoon, when I came home from school, Grandmother said that I was getting be a lady, and ladies must know how to embroider. So she said that I was going to start with a sampler. It will be my first piece of needlework and when it is finished she will have it framed for me and if I want I can have it hung over my bed. She gave me a piece of linen with cross bars on top of it and taught me how to count the stitches, two stitches for every square. First I must make the whole alphabet, then I must make the numbers, after that I may do my name and then a house and a peacock and a pair of shoes and a chair with a cushion on it and all sorts of pretty things that I think of but Grandmother said to do only one thing at a time. Perhaps if I can make even stitches that maybe for my next birthday she will buy me a lovely sewing basket, just for myself and let me use the pink and gold thimble that Grandma Uri gave me.
You can read about the history of needlepoint samplers in an article from the V&A Museum and see an example of the type of sampler Hilda would be making from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.