When I first saw this fabric come into the shops I knew I had to have some. The designs on the Memory Made collection from Lewis and Irene are just a dream come true for a crafter. There are fabrics covered in drawings of yarn, buttons, sewing, scissors and more. The collection was designed by Cass Connolly and is inspired by her Grandmother’s crafting box filled with treasures that she remembers playing with as a child.

For a long time Lewis and Irene fabric has been used for quilting but we are starting to see more and more people using it for dressmaking and it is definitely one of my favourite dressmaking fabrics to work with. It was quite hard to choose which design and colourway to go for but I decided on this one. The russet colour really suits my dark features and I knew it would be a great colour for this time of year.

As I said, Lewis and Irene cotton is one of my favourites to work with. It is soft and comfortable to wear but has enough stiffness and hold to it to make it a very easy sew. It presses well with an iron and gathers easily – two things I always need as I am always making gathered skirt dresses!

I decided to make a favourite pattern of mine – the Pansy dress by Rosery Apparel. This is the 4th time I have made this pattern and I really do love how it comes out. The pattern has two options for the sleeves, a long sleeve or a short. I decided to go with a short sleeve this time as I thought that would best suit the fabric. I did hack the pattern a little by adding a gathered ruffle at the bottom. This was very simple to do I simply cut my skirt pieces just over half the size of the height of the pattern pieces. I then used to the skirt piece as a width measurement and then cut out three pieces of fabric to the height I wanted. I sewed them together into a circle and then sewed gathering stitches at the top, attaching the ruffle to the bottom of my skirt as you would a skirt to a bodice.

Of course, I had to add pockets as I do with all my dresses! I can’t survive without a pocket these days and this fabric has enough weight to it to cope with two deep pockets. The dress does up with a key hole neckline making it easy to put on. The neckline uses bias binding which you can of course buy but I always opt to make myself out of my fabric to match the dress well. Sometimes this means sewing together multiple pieces of fabric but it is easy to do.

For a full tutorial on how to make this dress check out Janelles Youtube video here. You can purchase the pattern here and the fabric is available on our website here.

Rachel is our Social Media Manager and Digital Content Creator. She also works as a freelance craft writer and content creator. You can follow her crafting journey over on her instagram.