This is a large rectangular needlework sampler worked on a sheer plain-weave natural color linen ground in silk embroidery threads in shades of black, brown, tan, green, peach, and cream. All four outer edges of the ground fabric are folded to the reverse and hemmed in position. Previous tack holes are along all four outer edges.
Embroidered on the sides and top is a large realistically-worked meandering floral vine, leaf, grape, and bud border that extends upwards from two stylized fruit baskets in the lower corners.
Worked within the floral border in center portion of sampler are ten rows of alphabets and numbers with narrow and mildly decorative cross bands as well as the signature line and verse.
The signature reads:
Louisiana the daughter of John and Rachel Shrader was
Born January the 17 1812 and Worked This Sampler in
The year one Thousand eighthundred and twenty five

The verse is the first stanza and first four lines of a hymn, sometimes and variably titled, "Love of things earthly is dangerous", by the prolific British hymn write Isaac Watts, (1674-1748). It reads:
Hymn
How vain are all things here below
How false and yet how fair
Each pleasure has its poison too
And every sweet its snare

In the center at bottom of sampler is a large, embroidered building with twenty windows, six doors, and two chimneys. A third chimney has been drawn on the surface of the ground fabric but never stitched. Extending from the side corners of the building are brick walls with a tree at each end. Three rows of green cross stitches under the fruit baskets, brick walls, and building tie the lower edge together and appear visually like grass.
Louisiana's sampler is closely related to a sampler worked by Eleanor Reeve in 1828. The families of both girls had strong ties to Kentucky, which suggests that their samplers were worked at a yet to be identified Kentucky school.

The daughter of John Shrader and Rachel Ross Shrader, Louisiana Shrader was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1812. John Shrader (b. abt. 1785) was born in Kentucky, but his father Jacob Shrader, Sr. had been born in Pennsylvania and moved to Jefferson County, Kentucky, by about 1784. John Shrader was a colonel, possibly in the War of 1812. In 1815, he was appointed Justice of the Peace in the New Madrid District, Territory of Missouri.
Louisiana married Cullen Melone (1805-1853) on July 15, 1828 at the age of sixteen. According to written family records they were married at the home of her father, Col. John Shrader, in Jefferson County, Kentucky (or alternatively noted, Shelby County, Kentucky). (See ancillary images). At the age of seventeen, Louisiana gave birth to her first child, Elmira T. Melone (1829-1903) and a succession of four more quickly followed, all born in Shelby, Kentucky: Rachel Melone (1831-1920); Drury Melone (1833-1903); John Shrader Melone (1835-1864); and Frances Marie ("Fannie") Melone (1838-1922). Her sixth child, Stephen Shrader Melone (1843-1857), was born on February 22, 1843, also in Shelby, Kentucky.
Louisiana Shrader died in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri, one month after the birth of her last child on April 27, 1843.
(AKS is grateful to Kim Ivey, Senior Curator, Textiles Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for the above information.)