I’ll always remember where I was when I first heard the phrase “Bruce Lee Tennis Outfit”

Perhaps the sports were the friends me made along the way.

Capsized

For Activewear Week the sewers were starting off with a challenge to make The Seven Panelled Caps of Evelyn Hugo

given the general fabric selection in the sewing room and the fact the sewers of this show are genetically hardwired to go for the wildest prints they can possibly see like The Terminator looking for Sarah Connor

this did results in a parade of caps that I think I could only ever see a 8 year old wearing largely against their will on a trip to Warwick Castle that a history teacher is valiantly trying to sell as exciting. But more important than the scramble for this fabric that Novello in the end managed to bribe from the other sewers grab for herself

Glendora is back and fighting fit after being pumped with only the best vitamin IVs and finest vintage blood transfusions because there was no way in Hell that the BBC wasn’t going to get to use the archive footage of her dancing around in a sexy Mrs. Claus outfit from Top of the Pops

this might singlehandedly be the best info dump one of these shows has ever done, possibly only beaten by whatever Caz and her husband have going on here

mummy and daddy are just fighting… and mummy’s winning. Go back to bed.

The Return of Glendora wasn’t off to a tremendously triumphant start with her blue camo cap being knocked down to 11th place

you’ll never guess who she managed to just beat…

the eyeroll of the century – my diva was in the trenches, but does prove that Being The Damian is not a definition of gender and is in fact a spectrum. The great sin that landed her in last place being that her sweatband hung a good centimetre out of the cap, which does slightly beg the question “Has Jess ever seen a baseball cap?”

but she did, in truly iconic style, try her best to fold it back up and hide it from the judges

weirder things have worked in war, like me playing as the Tatars in Age of Empire II with an entire fleet of kamikaze camels to overwhelm the Mongols as I played Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park at a distinctly unsafe volume

and speaking of a pair of flaming humps

both members of the PJ & Duncan tribute band, PB & Jankin’, landed on the podium – I think for me, Dan’s was the best because I think it perfectly captures the look of a cap that got worn and lost on a school camping trip in the early 2000s

there are at least 400 of these caps in the lost property of every low-tier safari park in Zimbabwe. Yes, I’m sorry, my junior school camping trips were to safari parks which in hindsight was WILD and resulted in significantly fewer deaths or injuries than you’d expect from allowing an entire class of 10 year olds to kind of just vibe in the wilderness with incredibly lax supervision. But before you put me in the guillotine, I’d like to make a case for myself… NOVELLO OWNS A GOLF COURSE

you do not understand how excited I am for the Sewing Bee’s own personal Marie Antoinette to do Designers Week next week, she’s ready to unleash hell as she gritted her teeth through the creation of a, what do you call it? “Baséball cap”?

her cap, which was very homemade Rollergirl Barbie cosplay in its luridness, wasn’t her best bit of sewing but did manage to just avoid landing her in the bottom 3 which alongside Jess’s sprained eyeballs and Top of the Pops Girly Glendora, was rounded out by Orla’s patriotically Irish offering

the exterior was good but the inside, which we never got to see, well Esme too one look inside it and clammed up immediately got that glassy look in her eyes so I can only imagine it looked a bit like some back alley Victorian surgery that was performed using only a discarded belt buckle, fishing line and the help of a plucky orphan

nothing but respect for MY Robert Liston.

Gaynor had also gone for the patriotic route

sadly there was not enough time to whack a dragon on the front, but she did manage to give Esme and Patrick a bonus piece of top stitching to make up for the severe pleat rationing last week – don’t eat it all at once, you two!

sadly the the stitching of the innards wasn’t quite as neat and went for a bit of a meander.

Making up the top 3 were Dan’s aforementioned cap and his partner in getting ready to rumble, Kit’s ~Burgundy~ and Orange offering

if you would have told me during the first series of Sewing Bee which looked a bit like an illicit small parish council meeting plotting to rob a bank

that we’d eventually feature contestants talking about slutty gay club events, I don’t think anyone would’ve believed you

I shall continue to send letters pitching Kink Subversive Subculture Week. I just wanna see a polite middle-english grandmother learn about furries as they repurpose unwanted stuffed animals into their Fursonas for the Transformation Challenge.

The last of the top 3, and taking silver, for his cap was Peter

whose cap will be worn precisely once to the skatepark, be brutally made fun of by a 7 year old wearing a PRIME branded hoodie who can barely ollie and never worn again

and just missing out was Saffie with her blue and checkered cap

and surely with those two both landing in the top 4 for the pattern challenge, nothing bad could possibly happen…

all that stands between success and failure is a pair of sleep paralysis cargo shorts and whichever haberdashery deity Jess communicates with

Jess, can you ask them to make capri pants go away?

Personally, I think my favourite cap of the evening was actually Caz’s – something about the pink and corderoy and lime green stripes causes my brain to make printer noises

I was just sad she couldn’t make more of the hummingbirds that the green striped fabric came with

she wasn’t exactly robbed and in fact 8th was probably quite a generous placement given that her cap couldn’t fasten because unfortunately velcro is a very binary material

it’s Hook-and-loop, not loop-and-loop, Caz. Joining Caz in the demand for more homosexual fastenings, was Yasmin’s Lesbian Pride cap (The SapphiCap?)

your girlfriend’s girlfriend is wearing this as she beats you in Mario Kart World racing as Princess Peach 💅

Stuart also had a very fun cap, having gone for this sort of waxprint that honestly probably deserves better than to be made into a baseball cap and *might* count as a Level 1 Hate Crime

but it was really cool that each part was made from a different part of the pattern of the same fabric – it gives it a sort of slightly gaudy Versace streetwear look. To be generous.

An Official Cap Ranking:
1. Kit’s Burgundy and Blood Orange Cap
2. Peter’s Skate Cap
3. Dan’s 2000s Throwback
4. Saffie’s Good Start
5. Yasmin’s SapphiCap
6. Gaynor’s Welsh Rare Cap
7. Stuart’s On Notice
8. Caz’s Homosexual Velcro
9. It’s a Golf Cap, Look It Up
10. Orla’s Been Kneecapped…
11. Glendora’s Still Got a Headache
12. Jess’s Lower Cap Pain

Re-cycling Tops

For the Transformation Challenge the sewers were having to take up to three assuredly vintage cycling tops and turn them into a complete party outfit – which basically amounts to making a dress with a not huge amount of stretch fabric, naturally resulting in a lineup of mannequins that look like concept sketches for the street walkers in Grand Theft Auto 3

which is the only time we’ll ever get Gaynor to come close to making a dress for someone that’ll let you snort cocaine off her chest for 50 dollars

however, it was a tentative few steps into new territory for Gaynor who made sure that the skirt still went to just above the knee

How to Play Grand Theft Auto III in a God Honoring Way.

On the other end of the Hemline Divide was Saffie who… kind of just began lopping the hemline to a point where not even the submarine-crushing amount of pressure she was putting on her “what we shall tentatively call a dress” would pull it beyond her mannequin’s cheeks

by which point Saffie was staring into the void and embracing her inevitable demise, so why not just commit to the absurdity and give your tits Tom Selleck’s moustache

I am slightly surprised the ruffles weren’t attached the bottom for the faintest hint of modesty like me attaching this fringe to a dress from Zara because *someone* keeps forgetting she’s 6 foot ostrich of a woman and the Zara models are like 5’6″

that dress was knee-length on the model. Gaynor, I need your very sensible help!

Having allegedly used his “one good idea” last week, I was a little bit worried about what Stuart would do when he was looking down the barrel of 3 cycling jerseys with a shotgun. However, I was very pleasantly surprised with his Van Goghian booby porthole

Esme and Patrick were a little cooler on it and thought it would have been better if the bottom and top coordinated a little better – which is perhaps true in the case of Van Gogh’s Nip-slip Period, however, I didn’t quite understand them leveraging the same critique at Glendora who I honestly would have easily put in the top 3 because I think this is the most genuinely fashionable outfit of the bunch? But probably hadn’t been altered enough

she was worried it was too short but… y’know… Cheeks Mandatory Saffie over there

top spot was instead being kept warm by Kit and the rabid Seychelles flag they’d unleashed on their mannequin

I think the skirt just looks a little bit too much like a shirt being flown at half mast because somebody’s inner tube burst. But is a significantly less egregious case of “That’s just a shirt!” than Jess who kind of just did an MsPaint editing job and added a panicked bikini because Peter said “Ibiza” and suddenly that’s where all of these parties were

which to be fair is fine – they’ve been given three scraps of sweaty lycra and according to Peter’s sketch are having to do this all at 17:20

I am completely unfit for reality because that is my Ill-advised Nap Time and you’d be lucky to get anything with even half this effort put into it

Caz very much focused on the top and then sort of just scrunched and stitched the skirt onto the mannequin, which usually does better than 11th place but Patrick and Esme were really on one about wanting perfectly coordinated vintage cycling shirts.

While Caz had a workable top and shrug of a skirt, Dan had a workable top (again, this is graded on the exclusive Sewing Bee Transformation Challenge Gaussian Curve) but his skirt looked a bit like it had been made with an angry doberman instead of a sewing machine like The Flintstones using a mammoth as a hoover

he still beat Caz which I think might require a stewards enquiry.

As for Peter, it was a bikini and a zip that threatens betrayal with every step you take

which wasn’t Patrick’s issue, instead he was questioning the pocket that probably made up 70% of this outfit

100 days in jail for Patrick Grant and his anti-pocket propaganda. It’s 2025, get with this times, grandpa.

Joining kit in podium positions were Yasmin and her outfit that you’ll see at least 50 twinks wearing at any one Pride event, meaning she absolutely nailed the desired unhingedness that Sewing Bee looks for

and she was balanced out by Novello and her very sensible and just really good mini dress

in terms of making it look like you’re not wearing a butchered Charly Gaul estate sale, I do think Novello probably nailed the challenge. I think you could wear that and get actual compliments and the fewest questions about why you’ve got a cycling jersey tied around your waist.

Lastly we have Orla who was taking the time to make godets to give her skirt any other shape than “this is a shirt stretched across my thighs, please don’t ask about it.”

the godets were naturally catnip to Esme, as is the fact it looks a bit like the costume for for A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the mousey girl who gets cast as Moth and starts a lifelong, completely one sided grudge with both the drama teacher and whoever got cast as Titania.

An Official Cycling Jersey Party Dress Ranking:
1. The Rabid Seychellois Flag
2. Yasmin’s Twink Pride
3. Novello’s Legitimate Outfit
4. Glendora’s 2 Inches From Being Short
5. Gaynor’s Experiments In Cleavage
6. The Role of Moth Shall Be Played By…
7. JUSTICE FOR PETER’S POCKET
8. Jess’s Cut and Drag Two Piece
9. Van Gogh’s Nip-slip Period
10. Dog Ate My Skirt
11. Caz’s Shrug
12. Saffie’s Rising Threat Level

Athle… Sure, Why Not?

For their Sports Weeks Made to Measure, the sewers were asked to make athleisure wear outfits which I think is a challenge that works better on paper than practice. It’s just quite restrictive brief, you google athleisure and it’s a barrage of neutrals, leggings and cropped jackets

and you’ll see more than a few of these exact outfits crop up, so good job scrolling lower than the first Google search everyone! I think it really just shows that the brief needed an extra layer to it because you either ended up with something that was literally just athletic wear, as in the case of Yasmin

nobody is wearing this outside of a sporting event sponsored by your local luxury butcher or a niche crisp company. Or, you get a little too much leisure, with Peter making a combination of every grown up in The Rugrats

could you wear it to the skate park? Yeah! You can kind of wear anything to the skate park, his does of course have the added benefit of the mileage of excess fabric gathered at the back that prevents you from breaking your coccyx

because he refused to measure his model on the ground of “it’s meant to be oversized” because he wanted a very streetwear fit and he fancied playing an always losing game of haberdashery chicken with Esme

my conspiracy theory is that Esme really fought for Orla to win last week but got overruled and thus decided Peter Must Die.

Glendora was the only one to do anything very interesting with athleisure wear on the grounds that she was not visiting the BooHoo Summer Sale Graveyard

I still don’t know how much of a workout you’re doing in a linen outfit but it did look comfy and like something Katie Holmes wears for a cross atlantic flight to keep a low profile at the airport and prevent deep vein thrombosis

it’s cool and has a very lux feel to it. Don’t think you’re doing a downward dog in it though.

Orla probably got the brief the best in that really athleisure is for people who like to pretend they do sport and enjoy their ominously green smoothie that takes 45 minutes to make and all of 15 to pass through you

and the resulting “5 minutes on the spin bike for the ‘Gram and 30 minutes in the sauna for me!” outfit was really cute with a fantastic colour scheme and a pitch perfect amount of nonsense

it’s a very cool outfit and the first of many cropped hoodies we’re about to see, the others being made by Novello for her just very normal gym outfit

I’ve seen 500 of these women at the gym – there’s nothing to really say, it’s just a fine gym going outfit. I don’t think you’re lounging in it. The Bruce Lee at the Australian Open outfit Caz made however?

I am baffled in such a way that nothing I write can ever be as funny as the concept of a Bruce Lee inspired tennis outfit. Imagine it, you walk out for your local club’s round robin tournament and your opponent is Debra who works at ASDA dressed like she’s about to go to town on you with a pair of tennis balls

I’d concede defeat immediately. She wins. Brenda is too powerful but I would like to see her playing against Stuart’s Wimbledon Legal offering

this is really good! There is an aspect of it that looks like it was made out of tea towels in a transformation challenge BUT, it certainly would win that Transformation Challenge. Or at least it would if Kit isn’t there MacGyvering a follow up collection of happy hour jumpsuits out of the RNLI charity towels lingering under your mother’s sink

if you want Good Tea Towels™ – check out the TotallyFlagulous store for the Every Strictly Ever tea towels and the Eurovision equivalent as well as some equally good sew-on jacket patches! It’s owned and run by Ellie who hosts the Keep Dancing Podcast, which is covering this year’s Sewing Bee that I guest on most weeks with a bunch of really fun people!

Dan was going for an outfit that could transition from a dance class to… I don’t know, 9th place on Drag Race?

and also, somehow, fitting into this collection was Gaynor, who after a sedate VT about how the most exercise she does is walking the doberman that Dan used to make his Transformation Challenge outfit and gardening

decided she was looking to the world of Roller Derby, but sadly the health and safety officer on set was going to be damned if they let her model rollerskate down that catwalk

it does sadly miss the tartan skirt that I think would have made it look more roller derby and less like she typed “athleisure outfit” in Google Images and stuck a pin in this article of Vogue’s hard hitting journalism

but I think Gaynor might be on to a fairly good streak from here – I imagine if anything were to hamstring her, it would be lycra. So I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see Gaynor in the final from here. I won’t call her my favourite because we all know that if I do, you immediately get eliminated

NO! I WAS JOKING! DON’T DO IT! TAKE PETER INSTEAD!

FUCK! Saffie, I am so sorry. I did really like your… Cunty Briefcase from Date Everything?

By far the most ambitious outfit with the vest that is also A BAG?

Which I imagine you probably can’t wear at the airport without causing a scene… But would make carrying The Big Shop™ back home slightly easier? Depending how you feel about body temperature asparagus. It was however, rather unfinished

and so I can’t really be surprised how this ended for Saffie given her biggest hope was for Jess to flounder and Jess was off to an amazing start by looking camp right in the eye

and she bloody well nailed it too, kind of alarmingly well

I’m not going to talk about the unitard because… that means I have to make direct eye contact with its fleshy bagginess and I refuse. The jumper is really cute! And you know Peter was going home because Esme complimented the placement of the neck ribbing and they immediately cut to Peter looking like he was plotting how to throw Jess under a stampede of convenient wildebeest

everyone’s a polite middle-class dad until they’re not.

Lastly we have Kit who was sticking with mesh for their boxing inspired outfit

it is very cute and I love the almost sequin-like effect that the mesh gives it and it also looks like Dreamchip Gemstone’s dinosaur dog, Fluffy’s haircut

that’s the best screenshot I can find without having to translate Polish and give my computer a virus in the name of watching a single episode of The Flintstones Kids. Again. Trick me once, shame on the fake play button. Trick me twice, shame on me.

In the name of righting last week’s wrong (it’s not that serious, Peter you did really well and I’m glad you got to experience that high!) this week’s Garment of the Week was very deservedly given to Orla

and unfortunately we were losing two sewers with Peter being The Haberdashery’s Icarus

and Saffie’s wings (that are also a bag!) also being clipped in the process

I’m gutted. I was so excited to maybe see more of Saffie’s screenprinting and.. Peter’s dog!

Next Week 10 sewers get Top Model Makeovers!

as we head to Designer Week