A Floral Celebration in Irish Crochet

After the success of my framed monogram, I decided to play around with some Irish Crochet motifs.  When I bought the frame for the monogram, the frames were on sale, Buy 1 Get 1 Free.  How could I resist?  And there was a perfect square frame that would be perfect for framing a piece of crochet.  I have long been fascinated by the highly textured lacy exuberance of Irish Crochet, and had played around with it off and on for years, and having recently downloaded Maire Treanor's video on Clones Lace, which clearly demonstrates the techniques, I was freshly inspired.  I pulled out a couple of favorite books, and began crocheting.

Irish Crochet is not for the fainthearted...it generally utilizes fine thread and tiny steel crochet hooks...and it uses more complex techniques like crocheting over a padding cord and more difficult stitches, like bullion stitches and clones knots.  I often find myself ripping out a stitch that didn't work right, and doing it over (and over!)  so that it looks right.  But though it can be frustrating at times, the finished product is well worth the effort.

After I had a selection of flower and leaf motifs completed, I tried arranging them in several different ways.  I chose the following arrangement:

This photo was taken before I actually had the flowers sewn onto the backing...and sadly, it is the only decent photo I have of this piece...it sold the day after I got it framed!  I need to make more of these...