This has been my mood all week.

Smocked Dresses

The first challenge for children’s week is to create a cute smocked dress with a Peter Pan collar and a contrast embroidered stitch over the smocked waist.

In order to achieve the gathered smock effect they have to make sure to choose an easily gatherable fabric and because it’s for a child it’s advised to use a print and while most go for cute florals or fun animals prints, meanwhile Ali’s toddler is apparently going for cocktails at Turtle Bay

As ever the matriarch of the group, in this case Therese, waxes lyrical about her experience with making children’s clothes (she has children and grandchildren you know!) while Nicole rolls her eyes and has no time for it because she now resents her child for growing out of a jumper she made for them that they grew out of in 3 months and now only wears Matalan multipacks as punishment. In the end it’s Therese’s experience that weighs her down as she is far too concerned about making it absolutely perfect that while everyone is beginning their smocking the other less experienced sewers (that’s SO-ERRS) rocket on in the blind hope that their brightly coloured fabrics will somewhat hide their sins. In Peter’s case there is no hiding the fact what he made was a 3 year old’s maternity dress

Matt takes a gamble by asking Joe Lycett to choose him some buttons, which went well for Nicole last time… He does at least give him so more direction and specifies it has to be yellow, however I’m not sure he made the right decision because the button is MASSIVE

It’s like a Digestive biscuit, at least it’s not a choking hazard though. He does still manage to win the round while Therese loses and gives off some big Jan losing the Madonna Rusical energy:

Matt being the Gigi Goode to Therese’s Jan seems about right tbh.

The final ranking for the smocked dresses were:

1. Matt’s Big Ol’ Button
2. Liz’s Punk Rebellion Against Tweeness
3. Ali’s 3 Year Old at Happy Hour
4. Hazel’s Very Good For a First Time
5. Nicole’s Mind The Gap Collar
6. Fiona’s Perfectly Average Dress
7. Mark’s Wonky Embroidery
8. Peter’s Toddler Pregnancy
9. Clare’s Floppy Collar
10. Therese’s Dress of Shame

Therese’s “My Children/Grandchildren” Count: 7.

Sleeping Bag Food

Every now and again there’s a challenge in TV reality/competition shows that feels truly bizarre and like it was designed by pointing a ferret in a ball pit of ideas and making food costumes out of sleeping bags very much fits into that category but I loved every second of this challenge because what we ended up with was a mix of that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer made Lisa’s “Floreda” costume and when a teacher realises there are too many children for the nativity play so all of a sudden there’s a lobster and a gorilla at the birth of Jesus.

The sewers are allowed only 1 sleeping bag, meaning that the bag they choose essentially decides the food they make, and it’s a pity that Therese got the purple one because I feel like if a few of the other sewers had got hold of it we might have ended up with a child dressed as an aubergine and I feel ROBBED of having that moment, instead we get Therese fully redeeming herself by making a fantastic bunch of grapes that wouldn’t look out of place in the pages of r/popping.

A large component of the challenge was how recognisable the food would be, although because Esme apparently just doesn’t eat food she stared at Ali’s costume for a good 30 seconds going “What is it?”

As much as it looks like a satanic Christmas tree it is obviously a slice of a sub-par supermarket’s own brand frozen pepperoni pizza complete with cheese that just does not adhere to the surface of anything and defies even the most basic laws of physics. Also causing confusion was Peter’s sushi despite the fact it was painfully obvious and a very good costume and honestly robbed of the win

I get that his use of the sleeping bag was minimal but it was SO GOOD! Mark however navigated Esme’s apparent culinary facial blindness but just sign posting exactly what he had made in the most obvious way:

We love a cheatcode.

The big drama of the challenge was that Fiona and Clare found themselves in a Watermelon showdown, which wasn’t much of a showdown because Clare produced a very good slice of watermelon

And Fiona produced a throbbing gangrenous labial fold

She was only saved from being the bottom because Matt plunged from top in the first challenge to rock bottom after getting a chartreuse and grey sleeping bag and turning it into a torture device that barely fit an already tiny mannequin, Although it did have a very fetching hat

The final ranking for the challenge was:

1. Therese’s Haemorrhoids
2. Clare’s This Is What Watermelon Looks Like Fiona.
3. Peter’s Robbed Sushi
4. Mark’s CHIPS, THEY’RE CHIPS. CAN YOU READ?
5. Ali’s Satanic Christmas Tree
6. Hazel’s I Can haz Cheeseburger
7. Liz’s Not so Great Pumpkin
8. Nicole’s Haunted Carrot
9. Fiona’s Medical Emergency
10. Matt’s Infanticide Apple

Therese’s “My Children/Grandchildren” Count: 12

Dungarees

The final challenge of children’s week was for the sewers to make a pair of dungarees for a child so the fabric choice must be sturdy enough to handle rough housing, machine washable and most importantly not bloody ugly, Peter I’m looking at you and the walrus skin sack you put your poor child in

Going in to this challenge it’s pretty fair to say that the only person really in much danger was Fiona after a very average smocked dress and her unmentionable watermelon but seemingly on a one woman mission to defy the odds Hazel decided to have a complete calamity of a round which all started by accidentally getting the print of one of her pockets the wrong way round so her spacemen were upside down (THE HORROR!) which then threw her off her game completely and proceeded to have brainfart after brainfart and spent an inordinate amount of time crying in front of her child model and making the poor boy VERY UNCOMFORTABLE

In order to remedy her upside down fabric she decided to sew a trickle of the spacemen fabric down the leg of the trousers and putting the pockets down so low there was no way the child was ever going to get his hands into them:

To be fair she may have been thrown off of gauging a child’s proportions because in the earlier challenge her mannequins arm did keep falling off.

But because of her frantic rush her dungarees also fit horrendously and looked like a Super Mario costume you buy off Amazon because it was only £5. Also having sizing issues were Peter’s aforementioned walrus skin and Mark who despite a great choice of flamingo print lining made his dungarees far too tight and his poor child model walked down the runway with as much mobility as the Tin Man.

Therese continued on her redemption trajectory with a pair of sunshine yellow dungarees in a controversial choice of chambray cotton which the judges were forced to eat their words about and even contemplated awarding it as Garment of the Week. Ali’s tie dye paint splodge pair were also in contention and then Liz’s punky, raw edged dungaree shorts which were lauded and highly praised weren’t even considered and in all honesty should have been Garment of the Week because they definitely had the most style and her model was living her best life and clearly loved them; spending most of her time mugging to camera and generally being better at vogueing than Michelle Visage.

Patrick can wax lyrical about how chic Therese’s grapes supposedly were LIZ’S DUNGAREES WERE ROBBED.

At the end of the day, despite Hazel’s nightmare of a round, Fiona just fell too far behind and ended up with an incomplete, holey pair of dungarees and there was no denying the writing was on the wall for her as the only thing Esme could find to praise was the woolly hat the child was wearing.

The Final Therese’s “My Children/Grandchildren” Count: 23. Hey at least she won garment of the week.

NEXT WEEK:

Ali continues to be Ali.