It was a Say Something Hat Day.

I really only want to talk about The Hat™.

Jeogori

For their Korean Week Pattern Challenge, the sewers were making a Jeogori, which is the traditional jacket-like top of the hanbok

and comes with a set of instructions that I think even Bletchley Park would’ve struggled to decode. We had the fully animated 40 second explanation and even I was confused about where and when exactly they were meant to apply the internal ties, which are different to the external wraps. You can easily remember this because you can’t spell “intestines” without some mixed up ties

There was a surprising amount of really quite visceral sewing going on.

I was actually genuinely impressed we didn’t end up with more incorrectly placed ties – Caz was the only who had her internal tie hanging off the side of her Jeogori like a male anglerfish slowly becoming the fused parasitic appendage of its horrible deep-sea wife

but don’t worry, she wasn’t in any sort of danger because she still managed to come third – perhaps guest judge Eudon is just a really big Bradford City supporter

as far as football colours go, it’s at least a statement.

Caz was largely saved by the quality of her sewing – the stitching in the ditch of the collar caused a few of the sewers the most issues but nobody was having a worse time than Dan who had the 100 yard stare of someone on death row every time he sat at the sewing machine

and by the end of it his collar looked just as tortured, forming more of a ruffle than a collar, really

it was very much a Trauma Jeogori

Trauma Jeogori, also being the name of a girl that Novello went to school with. AND SPEAKING OF NOVELLO, I guess I have to address The Hat™ because I received 5 separate messages last night that just said “NOVELLO’S HAT” in all caps and a varying amount of exclamation marks. I was in the middle of a game of D&D in which I was pouring tea out of a pelican called Kevin, so I had assumed it was going to be a part of her transformation challenge AND NOT SOMETHING SHE BROUGHT FROM HOME AND WOULD WEAR UNWAVERINGLY FOR THE WHOLE EPISODE

I sat for the whole episode waiting for someone to ask her about The Hat™ and nobody did, it just sat atop her head like the flat-topped woollen elephant in the room. It is my Bigfoot. It is my Roman Empire. We are all The Hat™ – sitting, waiting, hoping someone will finally address our continued existence. I see you, The Hat™, and I respect you

sadly The Hat™ could not buy her enough good will to have them respect her Jeogori which didn’t wrap correctly and a traditional Jeogori should never breast boobily

that wasn’t really the only problem, I also think a Jeogori probably shouldn’t be made out of a fabric not usually found outside of B&Q garden furniture cushions in the wild. However, I do appreciate swinging big with a pattern, it gives me SOMETHING to work with. The only other sewer to go with a printed fabric for the main body of their Jeogori was Kit, who nailed this challenge so perfectly I think Eudon was ready to offer them honorary South Korean citizenship

it’s a really stunningly made garment and Kit continues their absolute domination of the Pattern Challenges like some sort of sewing Terminator. Caz is Sarah Connor.

Joining Kit’s Jeogori and Caz’s Bradford’s City of Culture Bid was Yasmin who seems doomed to be the perpetual Bridesmaid of Sewing Bee as she clocks in for her fourth second placement in a Pattern or Transformation Challenge

I’m really rooting for Yasmin to have her moment and I hope they’re, for lack of a better word, edging her because they can see her going the distance to the final, much like their refusal to give Kit a Garment of the Week – at the moment it’s hard not to see the final 3 being Kit, Caz and Yasmin. But if anyone is a sleeper hit, it’s probably Orla who hasn’t been very prominent in the edit for the last two episodes and got that very early ROBBED QUEEN moment they thanklessly gave to Peter WHO SQUANDERED IT. Orla’s earth tone Jeogori, was very successful and not once did Esme’s dislike of brown come up because it wasn’t convenient

she was the only one to use three different fabrics for her body, wraps and ties which went down very well with Eudon, it was just a shame that her collar was a little on the lumpy side.

While Orla may be the obvious choice for a sleeper hit, my own personal Sleeper Agent is Stuart because it’s hard not to love a man that talks a bit like Eeyore the moment he is slightly inconvenienced

his midnight blue and amber yellow colour combination was probably my favourite

but by his own sad-sack admission, he had unfortunately run out of time and hadn’t got around to finishing the hemlines of his sleeves

but he wasn’t the only one, Gaynor hadn’t managed to hem the bottom of her jeogori

and it had nothing to do with after the 5 minute time call, it cut to her sitting at her desk watching the others frantically and forcibly flattening their collars with their irons set to nuclear levels

my main disappointment with Gaynor’s jeogori was that she had this really cool snake fabric

and it just didn’t end up reading very well as the collar – but I like that Gaynor is slowly and steadily leaning slightly wilder.

Lastly we have Jess, who had used a fabric that just made her jeogori look inherently like pyjamas, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (I think, I do not know if there’s a cultural taboo around wearing a Jeogori to bed)

she’d also run out time – a potential indicator that they needed more instructions, or for the instructions to at least not be set by one of The Guardian’s cryptic crossword setters, because her Jeogori came filled to the brim with a 3 Down: Trendy Postscript Sandwich (4)

now I know that’s probably a taboo.

An Official Jeogori Ranking:
1. Kit’s Korean Passport
2. Yasmin’s Bridesmaid Jeogori
3. The Official Bradford City Jeogori
4. Hems Matter Until They Don’t (Stuart)
5. Orla’s Acceptable Earth Tones
6. Hems Matter Until They Do (Jess)’
7. SNAKE!
8. Dan’s Post-traumatic Stress Jeogori
9. Novello’s B&Q Patio Jeogori

Taekwon-D’OH!

This week’s Pattern Challenge was really interesting with the sewers all being given a white Taekwondo uniform and a set of coloured belts to transform into any garment their wildest imagination could think of. Or a circle skirt. This meant the sewers all had the same materials and were on a level playing field, mostly to stop Dan from potentially monopolising the belts because nobody was beating him over a scuffle for all the blues

there was a non-0% chance that Novello might lift The Hat™ to reveal a rat that knew martial arts, but it seems her own personal Ratatouille is more of a circle skirt adept

I get that some people can’t do spontaneity and the Transformation Challenge must be 90 minutes of feeling like the walls of a refurbished cotton mill are closing in on you because someone touched the ancient cursed sundial

but GIRL. This is… nothing?

There is very rarely anything on this show that I look at and I think “I can do that” with a shrug but I fully believe that I could create a circle skirt with a pair of belts as bracers in 90 minutes without making a sewing machine too angry. But Novello wasn’t the only one slightly phoning it in because Jess just made Baby’s First Experimentations With An Unwanted Belt

I need to know what happened with these two because when has “I’m keeping it simple” ever paid off in a Transformation Challenge?

it is a challenge specifically designed to create something that looks like it came out of a poorly dubbed Tokusatsu series that aired every Saturday morning in 1998

even Gaynor was dressing her mannequin like it was Bonnie Blue playing a game of pick-up-sticks on her boobs (You get really bored by the 43rd and need *something* to do)

the outfit does make more sense when viewed head-on

which is the opposite of Orla’s which looks extremely simple and underwhelming when viewed from the front

but had this really fun checkered detail running down the side which overall looks a bit like something the Romanian Eurovision contestant who ends up on the right side of the leaderboard wears for the Turquoise Carpet

Tone Indicator: A Compliment. The judges did think it was “too fragile” which… Sure, but the Transformation Challenge feels like more of a concept phase than making a serious garment so I might have swapped Orla’s dress with Stuart’s LEGO Midsommar garb

It was good but I think I found Orla’s treatment of the materials to be overall more interesting.

The only sewer to really lean into the Korean theme for the week was Dan who was making the kindred K-pop garment to Orla’s Ch-eans, a pair of B-eans, if you will

we’re so back and I was genuinely gutted that Dan didn’t land in the top three for this, it’s the perfect amount of Extremely Silly and would’ve been my winner if Kit hadn’t churned out this structured coat that Esme could probably wear and retreat into like a turtle

but it’s easy to make something like this when you outsource your work to a game of dictated pictionary

you come first in 5 challenges and suddenly you won’t get out of bed for less than free access to all the ricrac you can imagine and the licensing of one (1) Kate Bush song

you deserve it, diva.

Lastly we have Yasmin, who was really leaning into the very flag-y colourway of the belts by creating the opening ceremony parade uniform for Antigua and Barbuda

it’s just a really well engineered top which at least forgives a little bit of the simplicity of it just being a top.

An Official Transformation Ranking:
1. All The Teenage Mutant NInja Turtles In One Outfit
2. Caz’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger
3. The Antiguan Flag Bearer
4. Dan’s K-pop B-eans
5. Stuart’s Adventures In Being Interesting!
6. 23 Points for Romania
7. Gaynor’s Titty Pick-up-Stix
8. Jess… u ok?
9. Novello… u ok-er?

Taking a Cheollik-ing

I was kind of hoping that Korean Week would in a blast of modernity with a K-pop stagewear Made to Measure, sadly those dreams were dashed (even more reason to cherish Dan’s martial arts skanklets). Instead the Made to Measure was for the sewers to create a garment inspired by the Cheollik which… I don’t know if being forced to look down the barrel of the Korean military history but never actually acknowledging the drafting machine that keeps stealing your favourite K-pop boyband members is the *funnest* note to end this all on BUT SURE.
The Cheollik is very similar to the Jeogori – the same collar shape and wrappings but is generally longer and features a lot of pleating details. And if this begins to sound a lot like the first week’s Made to Measure, you aren’t wrong but this time Gaynor was forced to do more than the two pleats she did for This Is Specifically Pleating Week

all the judges could really say about it was “it’s very you!” to Gaynor, which basically means “it’s the perfect dress for your 50th wedding anniversary!” – which her husband is delighted by

I don’t know, maybe show him the Transformation Challenge outfit?

Of course, sewing the garment was probably the easiest part of the challenge, the hardest part being finding a pattern that didn’t required you to have a 750 day streak on Duolingo’s Korean course

so the sewers had a few options: risk a Google translate that interchanges the word “Pleat” and “Wrinkle”, hope to God the 5th page of your Google search churns up something usable or draft your own pattern. Two sewers were braving the latter – obviously Kit was one of them because they’ve drafted every Made to Measure outfit and the other was Novello who did seem to have written more of an essay and/or cry for help

she had a bit of a to-do with the sleeves and throughout the process that felt more like torturing a set of curtains than making an outfit she retreated further and further into The Hat™

and yeah, the final outfit just didn’t quite come together for her, which is a real shame because that gold jacquard could’ve been a real showstopper

the judges mostly dinged the collar of Welsh Dragons being the biggest shame of the outfit but that was also before Esme picked up the sleeve to compliment it and discovered it was attached by more of a vague conceptualisation than actual sewing technique

QUICK NOVELLO, LIE AND SAY IT’S FOR QUICKDRAW ARCHERY!

Yasmin had seemingly done the biggest deep dive on the history of the cheollik and I’d bet anything there’s 300 page word document somewhere titled “Interesting Cheollik Facts To Make Patrick Like Me” – she’s just like me for real. I did really love Yasmin’s outfit though, there was something very cinematic about it

it was faultlessly made and moved beautifully but it did read a little bit costumey, although this was significantly lessened by the fact Dan was making maternity wear for a Santa’s unionised elves

had this been made in a Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Week Transformation Challenge using only the mattresses found in a Closing Down Mattress Store that never actually seems to close down? Fabulous, a winning look even! The fact these fabrics were brought in from home with the intention of being made into this outfit is insane, she looks like a microwavable Beanie Baby

but hey, it’s a statement! Jess’s pink Chanel inspired pink checked dress kind of got a little lost in the mix because it lacked any significant point of view

it’s pretty, which to be fair to Jess is more than you can say for Chanel’s output at the moment.

While most of the sewers were opting for women’s wear takes on the cheollik, Kit was using a male model for their subconscious Kate Bush jumpsuit

it’s a very cool outfit and the pants moved beautifully but there were just a few small aspects that hadn’t been finished quite up to standard, which seems to be Kit’s achilles heel in the Made to Measure. In this case it was the collar that didn’t quite stand to full attention

it’s more of a semi-collar.

I really like the sound of Stuart’s as he was talking about combining a traditional Korean cheollik with a more classically British raincoat but I can’t say the final result fully won me over, I just think it looks a little bit too fussy and busy around the chest

I think a lot of it could’ve been lessened if he’d just made it all the same colour fabric and I agree with Patrick that the hips needed to hit just a fraction higher. But I adored the storm flap at the back

there’s just something very elegant about that detail. But by far and away my personal favourite of this particular challenge was Orla’s that felt very current and light

it’s just a really cute, fresh looking out fitand I like the flower on the back, even if my immediate reaction to it is to think it’s the Radiation Warning symbol

but radiation has never looked so cute!

Lastly we have Caz who was Cazzing at an 11, stating her inspiration was that famous piece of Korean culture, Elvis Presley. In my head, this was the Elvis she was talking about and I was about to start tapping my “DO THE CHALLENGE!” sign

however, the Elvis that Caz was channelling was the Elvis biopic starring Austin Butler and Austin Butler’s Unwavering Commitment To That Accent

Caz did just as much research as Yasmin, it was just on an entirely different subject, like that time in my college BTEC course I misread the 1500 word count and ended up producing a 15,000 word essay about Black Swan. My mistake was mental illness, Caz making a Neon Camouflage Elvis Presley Cheollik (a completely unbiblical sentence) is just Caz being Caz

it is also a million times better and more fashionable than a Neon Camouflage Elvis Presley Cheollik has any right to be. Caz is one of those cases on the show where she’s surpassed just being a sewer and feels very much like a designer.

An Unofficial Cheollik-inspired Garment Ranking:
1. An Unbiblical Elvis Presley Cheollik
2. Easy, Breezey, Beautiful, Radiation Girl
3. Yasmin Camera Ready Archer
4. Gaynor’s Jacques Vert Cheollik
5. Kit’s Subconscious Kate Bush Cheollik
6. Stuart’s Raining Day Cheollik
7. Jess’s Cheoll-ish
8. Dan’s Beanie Baby
9. Novello’s Carol Cheollik

This week’s Garment of the Week was very deservedly given to Caz, they could’ve maybe wangled it to Orla or Yasmin to spread wins out a bit and I would’ve only pulled a bit of a face, but it’s also fun when someone gets two major wins in a row

as for the elimination, it was very much down to either Novello or Dan but considering that Dan’s at least looked like something somebody in Whoville would wear, Novello and Novello’s Hat™ were bidding adieu

I’ll miss The Hat™ most of all?

And so, 8 go to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Week!