I have a rather red face tonight over my statement about sampler quilts being a 20 th century invention. I googled History of the sampler quilt...and read an article by Robert Shaw. This is a most interesting article. He says the style dates to early 1800's. Baltimore album quilts are certainly samplers of a sort. Statements are also in his as well as other references that sampler types were used as teaching projects. Having said all this, I don't recall many samplers of the era standing out as being a common and popular style.