Mountmellick embroidery in Ireland

A little while ago, Angelina from Ireland commented on one of the posts on this blog. She told us that she and the ICA group that she is part of, are currently learning Mountmellick embroidery in Ireland. I was so interested that I asked her to share some more with me and all you lovely readers. Following is what Angelina had to tell me:

The Irish Countrywomen’s Association [ICA] is a national organisation that was set up 100 years ago; it is based in local communities with over 700 guilds throughout the country.

Roscahill ICA Guild was set up in 1971 by a very enthusiastic group of women. (Roscahill is in Galway in the west of Ireland and is a beautiful place to live in!) The basis of ICA membership and most definitely ours is one of friendship and fun; the focus is to facilitate women in our community to meet as a group, to socialise, to discuss issues of concern and to nurture and promote traditional crafts. Currently there are 21 members of the Roscahill ICA and we meet weekly in our local Community Centre.

Social outings, information/educational talks, learning new skills and reviving old skills are all included in our undertakings. Each year we select a theme it may be something very new or something we have all done before but, want to update our skills. We are involved in many local community and church activities as well as achieving numerous awards in everything from embroidery to calf rearing and from set dancing to art.

Over the years we have done hand knitting, macramé, cross-stitch, crewel embroidery, ribbon embroidery, gingham embroidery, blackwork, decoupage, crochet to name but a few! Our current project is to learn Mountmellick Embroidery.

Our Mountmellick Embroidery Project took off on the 27th February 2010 with our first workshop.

Our craft teacher arrived laden down with books, patterns and samples of Mountmellick embroidery that she had done – beautiful pieces – we wondered if we had bitten off more than we could chew!

This is some of our craft teacher’s work…

There were 15 Roscahill ICA members at the workshop. We were each given material and thread to practice the stitches on.

Firstly our teacher demonstrated the stem stitch and we practiced it. From that we continued with:

• Whipped stem stitch
• Chain stitch
• Whipped chain stitch
• Twisted chain stitch
• Snail-trail stitch (also known as coral knot stitch)
• Cable chain
• Knotted cable chain stitch
• Bullion
• Cable plait stitch
• Buttonholing: saw tooth, indented, fringed

Our aim over the next few weeks was to be competent enough with the basic stitches to move on to working our first piece of Mountmellick Embroidery! …And this is what we did.

Mountmellick embroidery motifs L-R: passionflower, lily, passionflower

Mountmellick Embroidery Workshop; Killannin Community Centre; 27th February 2010

Left image: What concentration! Right image: Our left-handed duo!

As much time as possible at our weekly meetings was taken up with practicing the stitches and learning from each other; trying to gain as much confidence as possible.

By the beginning of April we decided that we had practiced enough and it was time to start something more structured. We choose one of the patterns from Mountmellick Embroidery: inspired by nature as our first piece.

Having reviewed a number of books on Mountmellick Embroidery we decided that your book was the most comprehensive and easy to follow. Our local bookshop had to re-order there was such a rush to get your book!

In the meantime, we discovered your Left- Handed Embroiderer’s Guide which Sally and Peggy find really helpful – (I’m looking forward to getting a copy of the Right-handed version as soon as it arrives in our local bookshop!)

Our group doesn’t meet over the summer months but we have set ourselves a target of working on up to three pieces of Mountmellick Embroidery so that we can submit them for proficiency testing later on. So hopefully we will have lots of completed projects to show you in a few months time!

I love reading your blog and intend following your stitch along!

Angelina, thanks so much for telling us about your group’s adventures with learning Mountmellick embroidery in its home-country! The pictures are beautiful, and we look forward to seeing some of your finished pieces after your summer break. But I’d love to know who your teacher is so that she can get the recognition she deserves also!

If anyone else would like to tell us all about the embroidery group that they are part of, please let me know. I think I can safely say that we all love reading this sort of thing!