An Italian, Luigi Ruffini, arrived at Edinburgh and established a workroom to train girls in tambouring. This embroidery involved embellished chain stitching and was worked with a hook. He modified the circular tambour frame, and produced a frame wide enough to hold a complete web of muslin. Rollers held by ratchets at either end enabled the winding of the material as it worked. Four girls worked at each frame.

These manufactories proliferated and soon spread to Ireland. The Scottish merchants paid their Scottish workers 6-8 shillings per week, their Irish workers 4-6 shillings. Ireland became the Hong Kong of the industry. At its height 1856-7 there were 400,000 embroiderers in Ireland and 80,000 in Scotland.

Thom's Commercial Directory gives the following description of Skerries.
"And all the population are nearly employed - the men at sea and the women and girls at embroidery and the boys apprenticed to boat owners. The embroidery of muslin is carried on extensively here. It was introduced by Messrs. Robert and Samuel Cochran in 1812. In 1817 they had upwards of 1,300 hands engaged thereon; since then from the increased number of employers it affords employment to a great number of females throughout the year for Belfast and Glasgow agencies."

Anyone walking along the streets of Skerries before the first world war would have seen groups of girls sitting outside the cottage doors, all hard at work embroidering stockings for the hosiery factories in Balbriggan. Every fashionable lady in those days wore black cashmere stockings embroidered down the front in vivid colours, red, blue, green and yellow. . .