Why are letters in the alphabet sometimes missing on a sampler?
Our modern alphabet has 26 letters.
On old samplers, letters are often missing. I get comments about this because people think those letters have been forgotten.
But the classical Latin alphabet does not distinguish between the I and the J, nor between the U and the V. Nor was there a letter W. That is why this alphabet has only 23 letters:
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z
Lowercase letters did not exist either, everything was written in capital letters. No spaces were used either.
It depends a bit on the time period in which the sampler is embroidered and the country of origin also influences the alphabet. For example, in France, the "W" is "Double V", so on a French sampler, the W is often missing from the alphabet. And sometimes there is a U, but no J.
I own an antique sampler made by "Julie Godefroid", but on the sampler this is embroidered as "IVLIE GODEFROID".
The writing system and the alphabet have a very long history and have evolved over the years. It's a bit far to write it all out here, but if you're interested you can read a lot about it on Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschiedenis_van_het_latina_schrift
View the patterns with alphabets in the webshop here.