By the late 1700s and early 1800s, schools for well-to-do young women flourished, and elaborate needleworks with decorative motifs such as verses, flowers, houses, religious, pastoral, and mourning scenes were being stitched. The parents of these young women proudly displayed their embroideries as showpieces of their work, talent, and status.

Miss Sarah Patten (1761–1843) opened the Misses Pattens’ School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1785. Afterward, her younger sisters, Ruth (1764–1850) and Mary (1769–1850), joined her. People at the time described the school as being “well-supplied with excellent teachers in reading, writing, arithmetic, lessons in music and now and then some ornamental works,” the latter referring to needle skills. 

Stitched at Misses Pattens’ School, this pictorial needlework shows George Washington’s Mount Vernon at the center. The image is taken from a drawing by Archibald Robertson and engraved by Francis Juke by 1800. Above the house is a raised, padded, and metallic eagle. In its beak, the eagle clasps a swagged, floral garland. The ends of the garlands join the fronds of a wreath and, when combined, they appear as a shield-shaped device surrounding the nation’s first president’s house.