A range of discourses on rural life, gender, and work accompanied the parallel expansion of mass garment manufacture and handicraft industries in north-west Ireland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Proponents of each frequently claimed that these two forms of production were sharply distinguished by scale, organisation and the ‘skills’ they required. However, these strategies for rural industrial development require a more integrated analysis. A close examination of the technologies of production, workers' earnings and experiences, and the stability of rural industrial initiatives, drawing on Parliamentary Papers and the Baseline Reports of the Congested Districts Board, challenges assumptions about the structure and status of women's industrial work in rural Ireland.