Having done a lot more crochet lately, I trawled around to find out what crochet groups Yahoo had to offer. Wow. I found some just right for me. One was the Irish Crochet Lovers group. I fell in love with Irish Crochet in the early 1980s, when I found some reprints of old Irish Crochet instruction books.
While we lived in England, I bought three pieces of Irish Crochet. This one must have had sleeves originally, but someone cut them off. Yes. Cut them off. That is why I could afford this otherwise fine piece of crochet.
Here it is, a little closer. Look at the variety of motifs! They would have been crocheted separately, then attached to a foundation. The background crochet was worked between the motifs. The completed piece was removed from the foundation.
The measuring tape in the picture below shows inches on the right and centimeters on the left, which gives you an idea of how tiny the stitches are. The motif is at the front bottom corner of the jacket fronts. To think that many Irish Crochet pieces were worked by children! I read that crocheters embedded wire into a cork to use as a crochet hook. We are so lucky nowadays.
