Helen Lillias Mitchell was born in Dublin in 1915, the youngest child of David and Frances Mitchell.

Her father was in the retail business, involved in running Hodges & Co and later Lennox Chemicals, and he was extremely active in the community, serving as an Elder of the Presbyterian Church and treasurer of the Royal Hospital Donnybrook. Her elder siblings were David and George Francis (known as Frank).

The former became a distinguished physician, the latter a renowned naturalist. His The Way That I Followed is a personal sequel to Robert Lloyd Praeger classic on the Irish landscape The Way That I Went.

The current editions of his extraordinarily ambitious Reading the Irish Landscape is a revised version of a work he originally published in 1986.

Like Frank, Helen shed her first name and was known as Lillias. She attended painting classes given by Elizabeth Yeats in Mount Temple School before boarding in Wales at a school known for the quality of its crafts. On her return to Dublin, she spent two years studying painting at the Royal Hibernian Academy School, and attended the National College of Art to study sculpture.

There was, however, yet another string to her bow. The Mitchells had originally moved to Ireland from Scotland.

From being a cabinet maker, Lillias's grandfather, Robert, had established a poplin weaving business in Brabazon Row in the Liberties.

She was herself drawn to weaving and, invited back to Wales, this time as a teacher. She leapt at the chance, particularly when she discovered a skilled teacher in Elle McLeod, an inspirational figure who had everyone "spinning, dyeing and weaving".

Together with a friend, Morfudd Roberts, Lillias established a school of weaving in Dublin in 1946, in a Mount St premises provided rent-free by her father. The school was a victim of its own success. With Roberts' departure for a job in Guilford, Lillias could not cope with the level of demand.

Persuaded to talk to the then Minister for Education, Richard Mulcahy, she was greeted with an invitation to establish a weaving department in the National College of Art. She ran the department until her retirement in 1980.