A SECRET SIGN

When I bought this colourful round tablecloth at a French Fair many years ago, the seller took me on one side and told me that this was a souvenir of World War 11.  Similar embroideries were worked by patriotic  French housewives to express their  opposition to the German Occupation and they worked them in the national colours, red white and blue as a gesture of defiance.     I have never seen another similar so maybe this was just a story to sell a fairly modern bit of work - it is very 1940s. .