In 1952, following the example of her father, George VI, the new Queen Elizabeth did her first Christmas broadcast, which included the words in the embroidery above. This was an example from eBay this year. As with other embroideries (as opposed to cross-stitch designs), the examples I've seen show the variations produced by embroiderers with different levels of skill and who have made individual variations to thread colour (I don't think it's always fading from sunlight - if you look at the letter E on the side in these examples, it's in a single colour in one, and more than one colour in another). I suspect this must have been a transfer, as the examples I've seen are on different colours of evenweave linen/cotton, from light cream to deeper beige/brown.
You can read more about the Queen's 1952 Christmas broadcast on her website (click here). That page has links to all her Christmas messages.
Here's another version of this sampler:
...and another...
...and another, that had a couple of detail photos too..
If you know more about this design eg. where and how it was published, please do leave a comment.
