Not in West Yorkshire you aren’t.

This recap is more of a Norwegian Fjord vibe.

Sews Upon The Tablecloth

We’re kicking off the Sewing Bee Holiday Tour rather tangentially as the sewers created patterned blouses out of vintage tablecloths which some of the sewers were very happy about – Georgie having already done this challenge in the first week for her Made to Measure

and Suzy being a frequent user of charity shop finds

that is the bravest thing anyone wearing the most 2014 Dunelm curtain fabric could say.

I do question the vintageness of said tablecloths based on the lack of staining

if your lace hasn’t gone yellow from having lived in the house of a chain-smoking woman named Doris, it’s just sparkling fishnet.

Due to the absolute dearth of colours and the fact everyone’s embroidery was floral, save for Luke who somehow managed to find the one example of abstractly embroidered squid in existence

there is only so much I can write about a series of 10 blouses that just became one amorphous rack from Dorothy Perkins

especially given Patrick and Esme complained if you so much as added an ounce of flare with some statement bias binding

how dare you put more effort in than we asked for? I will be seeking justice for Lauren for a long time because her blouse was cute (I am severely overestimating the memorability of these blouses)

and most importantly didn’t look like a cardiothoracic surgeon had gone on an emergency 3 week holiday because their hands were looking a little bit shaky and sangria is definitely the best cure for that

I will however let Suzy languish away in 7th place because I don’t think anything in this world can adequately explain what’s happening with her hem that seems to be slowly be turning her blouse into a croissant

but, and this has been said a lot so far this series, AT LEAST THERE WAS A WEIRD HEM, DON

not that Esme or Patrick ever got around to bringing that up given that instead of the short puff sleeves they were looking for, Don had instead ended up making a garment for the Highpriest of the Buddhafield Cult

and as a fan of statement sleeves that make you look like you’ll confidently give everyone around you incredibly bad advice, I like them! And, as a bonus they might be long enough to get him out of the pattern challenge abyss

Kiell nervously chuckling as he makes direct eye contact with the safeguarding officer just off screen and finding himself on Don Crisis Supervision Duties

good to see the Sewing Bee Single Point of Access team doing good work.

The biggest consideration of this challenge was how the sewers would use the tablecloths’ embroidery, and in the case of Janet whether she would use a tablecloth at all

Janet, babe, YOU HAD ONE JOB!

Her blouse ending up as a rare instance of Party at the front

nursing home at the back

but if they were going to be hard on Suzy and Lauren for adding just a little of extra non-tablecloth as a trim, they had to go in on Janet making 50% of her blouse out of not-a-tablecloth. She still didn’t come last, that punishment was reserved for Don’s baby elephant trunk sleeves

and Marcus taking 9th place for having sleeves that were at least the right shape but applied like someone had assembled a LEGO minifigure out of miscellaneous parts in the dark

the scalloped edge along the bottom hem is really cute though but it’s not quite enough to distract from the one sleeve that looks like you’d have to dislocate your shoulder to get into it.

Georgie ran into a unique problem of getting halfway through her blouse, stepping back to take the full picture in and realising she’d made a piece of mammorial folk art

although, given where they ended up lying on the blouse, they looked more like your clavicle had adapted to trying to scare off predators like a moth

you’ll never be bothered by insectivorous birds and lizards ever again! Esme Young however will not be fooled.

The one thing that did end up getting Georgie knocked down a little bit was the fact her tablecloths weren’t perfectly matched – it didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did Esme and I think I would have given her third place over Alex purely because Georgie used more embroidery which was the main point of the challenge

but Alex’s was still a very pretty blouse – ultimately losing out to both Ailsa and Luke who took joint first place with their blouses – Ailsa’s looking the most professional and pattern-like as she’d grabbed the premium tablecloth of the bunch

and Luke having the most interesting embroidery placement with their asymmetry and use of colour

which I think I preferred purely for the creativity of it, but given that both were so well sewn and this is the pattern challenge, I cannot look a Joint Queer Power Couple Win in the mouth.

An Official Tablecloth Blouse Ranking:
1. Doing It For The Gays
3. Alex’s Lack of Incident
4. We’re All Going On A Mammary Holiday
5. When You’ve Got To Be in Triage at 6 and Malaga by 7
6. Lauren’s Extra Curricular Vanity Project (Tone Indicator: Positive)
7. Suzy’s Extra Curricular Vanity Project (Tone Indicator: Negative)
8. Janet’s Save The Tablecloths Charity Telethon
9. Marcus’s Mystery Sleeves
10. The _[sewing] Abyss (1989, James Cameron.)

There’s a Bilbo Baggins Pun In Here Somewhere

Having not trusted the sewers enough to give them the tablecloths for the Transformation Challenge because Marcus would’ve turned them into an embroidered chef’s toque

they were instead given a load of nautical gubbins that was a revealed on a mannequin which, and I say this with all the love in my heart, looked like an outfit Matthew from last year’s Sewing Bee would’ve worn on a casual thursday afternoon

sadly we were not here to make outfits that served nothing but cunt splice

(you will not believe the noise I made when I was browsing the wikipedia glossary of nautical terms for a Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent pun but and it just… exists)
Instead the results of Esme’s ransacking of the RNLI museum was to be turned into a holiday bag for your sandy shoes, wet towels and collected shells that you’ve doomed to gathering dust on your bathroom shelf. The one specification was that they HAD to use rope so we all waited with baited breath for Marcus to accidentally discover Shibari

unfortunately his meander through Japanese rope bondage was not as successful as his Blue Velveteen Rabbit (IN MY EYES IT WAS A SUCCESS, ESME) because it was mostly just an ordinary bag with a bit of rope

the only thing really going for it was the fact it didn’t drag along the floor like you were a child that just had the worst day at school if you were any shorter than 5 foot

at some point during this episode, Janet seemed to decide she was going to be going home and I think it’s when they unveiled the ropes and she realised there’s better things she could be using them for on an average afternoon as everyone else grimaced

but she wasn’t going to go out without drawing one more painting – sadly the producers had told her to erase the original sketch of her doing the naked Kate Winslet pose from Titanic

She did make sure we knew that TGBSB stood for The Great British Sewing Bee and not The Global Business School, we would never have guessed. Also she’d added the initials of her and her husband, fully giving away who made it, which makes Esme and Patrick putting her dead last *slightly* funny.

I did like Janet’s creativity with adding a little artistic detail, I wish more people had done something similar. In fact everyone’s bags ended up so ordinary I was just ecstatic when Lauren haphazardly glued a strand of braided rope across her bag that had the same energy as Vinegar Strokes wearing a cardboard cutout of the River Thames because the Drag Race UK producers couldn’t license a picture of her tube map dress she’d originally brought

which sounds like a read, but there’s worse Vinegar Strokes outfits I could compare you to

still an outfit with as much hem as Don’s average pattern challenge creations.

Outdoing everyone in the artistic stakes was Pascha and her duck sack (which you have to say very slowly and deliberately every time you say it)

I love it and will protect it with my life – sorry Don, but I am forsaking you for my new adopted child, you have after all proven yourself to be utterly invincible

The year is 2514. The forests have turned to dust. Humanity was driven underground by nuclearly evolved rodents. We have turned to cannibalism. Don is still competing on the Great British Sewing Bee.

Pascha would sadly not be rewarded too highly for having overcome her anatidaephobia and exorcising the duck that plagued her (there’s only a vowel of difference between the two of us, babe)

with top spot being taken by Alex’s very useful rucksack to tote utility bag

definitely the most useful bag of the bunch, but it’s not quite a duck sack now is it? Luke didn’t managed to score themself another joint win, but their bag did come with an added safety measure that Patrick greatly enjoyed

and it’s good, but it’s not quite a duck whistle is it? (I want to know if the duck whistle was actually there or if someone from production had to frantically source a duck whistle in Farsley)

FIFTH PLACE FOR HER FULLY IMMERSIVE DUCK EXPERIENCE? This injustice shall be remembered, Patrick. And while I fully support giving Ailsa nice things, I didn’t really see the appeal of her mutated fanny pack

ok sure, it had more rope than The Duck Sack but… is it good rope? And if we were going to penalise the duck for not carrying a lasso, they could have at least thrown Georgie in third place for the use of rope to make a purse which I think got overlooked slightly

I like it! The bag is quite simple but… aren’t all bags? They’re basically Baby’s First Sewing Project. In theory at least. I had to make one in my D&T class once and instead of it being a drawstring bag it was just a pillowcase that you would never find a pillow for.

Suzy had gone for the most uniquely shaped bag which was begging for someone to flop it onto the table while declaring themself fresh tilapia

it’s a very famous Chanel design but it’ll always be Gia Gunn’s hula hoop with a pocket to me.

I am kind of obsessed with Suzy’s bag because as she described it as beachy and “holiday vibes” it just began to look more and more like someone had shrunk and pickled Arnold Shortman’s head

and when I say Suzy isn’t *not* Helga Pataki…

we’ll move on before I list off everyone’s spiritual Hey Arnold connection – OH NO, I’VE SLIPPED AND I CAN’T STOP…

speaking of Don, he’d made what essentially looked like a portable bodybag

he was slightly flummoxed by how best to secure the bodybag for the Mortician on the go, but he eventually embraced the lesbian solution for his Tactical Corset

it’s been a really big series for carabiners. Happy Pride Month!

An Official Holiday Bag Ranking:
1. YOU’LL NEVER BE A DUCK SACK
2. YOU’LL ALSO NEVER BE A DUCK SACK
3. YOU’LL DEFINITELY NEVER BE A DUCK SACK
4. Georgie’s String of Purse Strings
5. JUSTICE FOR THE DUCK SACK.
6. Suzy’s Decomposed Chanel SS13 Bag
7. Lauren Got Lost In The Braid
8. Don’s Bodybag for the Tactical Lesbian Mortician
9. Marcus’s Bag of Kink-free Tricks
10. A Sinking Ship by Janet McSewingBee aged *LOUD COUGHING NOISES*. Sharpie on Gore-Tex.

Sewn Riviera, Wider Than A Mile

The Made to Measure Challenge felt more concretely holiday themed with the sewers designing for the French Riviera with no other specifications which you might think “That sounds a bit vague” NO! It was incredibly specific

Patrick and Esme have a very well curated Resortwear Diagram and nobody was given prior access to it.

There was clearly an unsaid expectation that everyone would go with outfits inspired by the Golden Age of Travel which is why Amber Butchart was let out of the Sewing Bee History Bit Cupboard frothing at the mouth to give us Coco Chanel Factoids That Aren’t That One, You Know The One while simultaneously catching sight of herself in the on-set monitor and realising her blouse comes dangerously close to looking like she had SHEEP SHAT written all over her

this week’s lesson was on Beach Pyjamas and the closest thing you’d get to a Pride Parade in 1932

how I long to be crowned Miss Beach Pyjama 1931.

The only sewer to go forth and Beach Pyjama was Janet who had gone for the most Janet and least French fabric you could possibly imagine

her thought process was absolutely googling French Riviera and getting distracted by the TripAdvisor list of 50 best cocktail bars along the Côte d’Azur and then making the mistake of shopping for fabric with an unquenchable thirst for a Sex on the Beach – I will bet £50 that’s Janet’s default cocktail order and if that doesn’t make the bartender uncomfortable enough she’ll order a slippery nipple while making direct eye contact

and as we all suspected the moment Janet decided she was making her outfit out of sparkly cocktail print fabric, the resulting outfit was a pink cowboy hat short of a Blackpool hen party

I kind of love the kitschness of it and it does look like something Sophie Ellis Bextor would wear on a celebrity episode of Gogglebox which you might have guessed was not giving the French Riviera fantasy

Esme didn’t *have* to put a pregnant pause between “It’s not something I could see anyone wearing” and “on the French Riviera” but she did, and Janet will be proving her wrong this summer and I believe her because she’s dressed like Mrs. Claus in June

we’ll just have to hope there’s less safety pins

after last week’s button-free episode, everyone was lulled into a false sense of buttonhole security

and while it may be an overconsumption of margarine leading to divorce in Maine situation, I will be keeping tabs of how the correlation between buttonhole issues and emergency tactical carabiner fastenings over the course of the series

nobody resorted to carabiners for this challenge, that wouldn’t be very Saint Tropez of you

I WAS WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO SAY IT AND THEY NEVER DID.

Most of the sewers did end up with vintage inspired garments – lots of high waisted and palazzo trousers. There were a couple of outliers though, both Marcus and Lauren’s felt much more 90s – or at least I can’t think of a decade more likely to feature white chiffon palazzo pants and a halter top

it’s the sort of outfit that lives and dies by the confidence of the person wearing it and luckily Lauren’s model knew what she was doing, a testament to her modeling skills given not even an hour before she had to hit the runway she’d heard the last thing you want to hear from your designer

“Your bum definitely isn’t all the way out” Lauren lied through her teeth

Aside from Lauren’s chiffon pantaloons playing a game of Hungry, Hungry Bums, Patrick decided it was more of a Southern Hemisphere outfit

which is weird because of all the outfits, this is the one you’d most like see on Queen of Calling Sneezes of Fabric An Outfit, Emily Ratajkowski at Cannes – a reference point I wish more people had gone with. Esme however was more concerned about the durability of the halter top

the French Riviera, famed for its disco dancing.

Marcus’s was a much more colourful option with an asymmetrical origami pleated skirt and a boob pelmet

I really liked this one and maybe that’s because it stood out amongst a sea of beige linens but it is also very charming – it’s like the outfit Mattel would’ve given to Tiki Bar Barbie

and thank God Esme and Patrick liked it because Marcus continues to play Russian Roulette with his marriage

there’s going to come a moment when Patrick and Esme hate the outfit he’d once created for her to wear to a fancy restaurant and that’s going to be an awkward living room couch.

Don was also making an outfit he’d made for his wife as his retirement from being a research physicist has developed into becoming a philosopher of trousers

SEAMS, WHO NEEDS ‘EM?

the lack of seams did also mean that Don had the time and willpower to actually hem an outfit and I’ve never been so proud of a man I don’t know since I saw a guy eating a whole Tesco trifle while waiting for the bus at 8am. I think about him every day

he redeemed trifles in my eyes.

Don was one of the few people who managed to sew both an adequately sewen top and trousers – nobody except Ailsa seemed to read between the lines of “a garment for the French Riviera” and realise you could just spent 4 hours sewing 1 pair of trousers. To be fair, Ailsa’s trousers did have enough fabric to count as 2 garments though

if only some people hadn’t used all the ropes and life vests, you might not be drowning.

The resulting pair of linen-y palazzo pants being so good she’d accidentally created the new official Sewing Bee uniform

still not my favourite trousers of the episode, that title belongs to Marcus’s cat eye trews

Marcus very kindly provided a link to the creator’s Instagram page: YourFriendSabo – sadly the trousers are from a while ago, but I shall wait upon the cliff like a whaler’s wife hoping they return someday.

Pascha had decided to make a pair of sailor inspired trousers as well as a scuba top and you can spot the exact moment she regretted having ever spoken the top into existence having realised she could’ve got away with just doing the trousers

her top is one of the most baffling garments ever brought to Sewing Bee and possibly the first to elicit an involuntary “Bloody hell!” from Esme

at some point during its Lovecraftian birth, Pascha had just given up on instructions and accepted it for the accidental scuba diving corset that it was

at least from a distance you can’t notice the self-digesting sea cucumber of a top – both because the trousers were so good and because they’d turned her model into Victoria Beckham

and she has a superyacht in Saint-Tropez so you know the outfit was giving French Riviera, even if the top isn’t allowed within 50 miles of Cap Ferrat. She’s lucky those trousers were so good too because Esme could smell her fear and was stalking her like one of the Jurassic Park velociraptors

Luke was also going for trousers and was the only sewer opting for a male model for their broderie lace shirt and beige trousers because THE FRENCH RIVIERA CAN NEVER BE FUN

you know when Netflix cast Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliot in Persuasion and it didn’t work because she has the face of someone who knows what a smartphone is?

I think Luke’s outfit has a similar problem because they had a model that will always look like he’s on a stag do in Berlin with the lads and if I can picture you doing LADS BANTZ on one of those beer bikes, you can never truly serve French Riviera Realness. But maybe it was just the underwhelming colour combination, because Georgie’s outfit was basically Luke’s after being on 6mg of estrogen for 5 years

she’s gone from serving stag do to being the mother of the bride at a beach wedding. It’s the transition goals we’ve all aspired to

if you’re wondering which part of the blog I spent far too long creating and chuckling to myself the whole time in Costa while I did it, it’s this part.

The black bra was a little jarring with the plain neutrals but Georgie didn’t have control of that but even with a nude bra, it just looks a bit too Debenham’s separates you bought from 2 different departments to feel really luxurious.

I was surprised that with Patrick and Esme gatekeeping French Riviera style harder than RuPaul gatekeeping Studio 54 references that Alex got away with her Lucy and Yak staple jumpsuit that she herself kept describing as looking like a deckchair and/or clown trousers

you will be unsurprised to find that if you google “Cannes Clown” the first result is a Julia Fox outfit, although it’s more the discovered body of Laura Palmer than Pennywise if you ask me

Alex did end up with an incredibly cute outfit but I think it’s a lot more British seaside than French chic (Oh God, I’ve lived long enough to become The Patrick)

a pattern that did work for the brief was Suzy’s polka dot two piece made from further recycled tablecloths as she further ascends to Charity Shop Sue-hood

the skirt is definitely the more successful part of the outfit – mostly because it was actually finished but the top was not a complete loss

with a little more time to polish it up she’d have been on a to a winner, I could certainly see this on one of the Fanning sisters during downtime between their Cannes duties.

An Unofficial French Riviera Garment Ranking:
1. Ailsa’s Galaxy Brained Life Hack Trousers
2. No Tablecloth Is Safe From Chaos Suzy
3. Don’s Successful Case of Top and Trousers
4. Tiki Bar Barbie (The Tiki Dream Bar Sold Separately)
5. No Such Thing As A Deckchair on the Cote d’Azur
6. Pascha’s Redeeming Trousers
7. Funkytown But In A French Accent
8. Lad Bantz in Beige
9. Georgie’s Mother of the Beach Bride
10. Janet’s Beach Pyjamas, Now With 80% More Grudge
11. Dishonourable Mention to Pascha’s Top

The winner of the episode was pretty obvious the moment Pascha’s brain melted and Ailsa’s trousers were given the “Je t’aime… Moi Non Plus” treatment (it wasn’t even a diegetic Je t’aime that I am sure Janet would’ve gladly supplied given half a chance)

I’m glad Ailsa has had such a strong rebound since the first episode that we shall not speak of. It was a Session 0, there never were buttonholes. Neil didn’t exist. TERRY PASTRY, WHO?

Coming into the Made to Measure Challenge it was very much a three horse race to oblivion between Janet, Don and Marcus. Both Don and Marcus managed to sew themselves a pair of French resort parachutes while Janet crashed and burnt amongst a fiery blaze of glitter and martinis

it’s how she would have wanted to go.

9 sewers move on to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Week where one of them will be eco-consciously mulched