I think I went to school with a girl called Ruffles Galore.

Are you ready for a thrilling game of Llama or Giraffe?

Adaptability Fashion

Kids Week was starting off with something new for the show – an Adaptive Pattern Challenge in which a pair of dungarees had been designed with considerations for disabled children – in this case elasticated shoulder straps and popper plackets on the legs. As such, they had a special guest judge for the challenge in Victoria Jenkins, an adaptive fashion designer

despite what might be one of the most lethal bobs ever committed to film, she was indeed very nice and I hope that the general success of this particular challenge inspires an Adaptive Week in the future.

As well as designing with adaptations in mind, it was also Children Week which means everyone had to choose fabrics that were fun, robust and would work as dazzle camouflage to keep your child safe from large birds of prey and German U-boats

and while Kit did more to protect a child from the encroaching threat of Naziism than our current government (ooh, zing), Orla co-opted Pride from Dan by cutting off access to the rainbow fabric supply

I think the funniest thing about this to me is that Orla *only* used it on her plackets and lining whereas I have full belief that Dan was about to turn a child into a walking billboard for The Vauxhall Tavern. With no access to The Gay Fabric™, Dan did what every sad gay does – embrace 2007 Paramore era Scene-score with the black and white checkered fabric

I had a backpack in this exact print and in my head I was serving Hayley Williams realness every day as I walked to school – the reality of the situation is that I could’ve been president of the Pauline Quirke Look-alike Society. I’ve been serving woman since I was 12 years old 💅

Dan had a few issues with his dungarees – nothing particularly major, just a strap that was too wide for the buckle and some uneven snaps on his plackets because he was raw dogging the poppers

someone should’ve gotten in on Kit’s Demonstration Popper Services instead of running around like a headless chicken in the background

because instead of addressing any of the issues of his dungarees, Dan was just getting his steps in and making a hat that very much takes the outfit away from the posting Blingee edits of Gerard Way on Bebo vibe and into line cook at a mid-tier bistro pub vibe

Esme loved the hat but sadly didn’t put it on because she has a strict one hat per episode policy in her contract

but even for the slight mistakes of Dan’s dungarees they were, as a whole, still really well sewn and I loved the yellow details against the black and white checkered fabric. But it was a particularly strong pattern challenge so he was unfortunately still down at the bottom, only managing to beat Caz who had had a placket mix-up of her own with her linings being on the wrong sides

but the placket was Caz’s only major error and the rest of her dungarees were very neatly sewn. I did also really love her fabric choice but that front seam with the non-pattern matched giraffes is the sort of thing that would’ve really annoyed me as a child and upset me greatly (I do not hold that against her, if pattern matching wasn’t required – DON’T DO IT! IT’S A TRAP!)

Caz wasn’t the only one to get their plackets in a tizzy, Orla had done the same thing but instead of shrugging like Caz and accepting her fate or joining Dan in improvised millinery she took the time to rectify her mistake

and for the most part it really paid off!

again, had this been most other pattern challenges, she probably would’ve ended up higher than third last but without Jess here to wheel up a mannequin draped in a pattern challenge creation held together by`hopes, dreams and enough pins to put an acupuncturist out of business (said affectionately), it’s getting a lot harder to avoid the dangers zone.

Some constants remain in the Pattern Challenge though with Kit getting first place for a pair of astonishingly perfectly made dungarees

while also having enough time to set up a wildly undertrained Child Dressing Assistance Services

I love Kid’s Weak purely because of the mannequins that pop off limbs like anxious axolotls – a real highlight in the Sewing Bee calendar.

Speaking of constants in the Sewing Bee Universe, Patrick managed to find one (1) stitch to use as evidence for keeping Yasmin in second place

I fear they’re gearing her up for that perfect Quarterfinal Shock Boot like they did Alex last year. She’s obviously a very talented sewer, but the edit seems completely uninvested in her outside of letting her expunge a load of exposition at the beginning of every challenge

in the event she gets eliminated, everyone is flying blind like the contestants on Destination X who are completely adrift and reliant on Saskia having once asked ChatGPT to list the countries of Europe for her now that Nick has been eliminated

I keep thinking I’m going to do an end of series overview of Destination X but I fear the only way I can possibly do it is a Jenny Nicholson style 3 hour blow-by-blow video recap because as terrible as the show is, there’s a lot of it that is just *fascinating*: from Ashvin completely derailing the biggest twist of the show by being absolutely terrible at the game to the appearance of The Mythical Jackie P and Judith refusing to throw the challenge to let Daren talk to her <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. Mess.

Stuart once again managed to sail through completely unscathed, imaginably because like any father he is genetically programmed to read the instructions at least twice before even attempting to do anything

he achieved a very good third place, just beating out Gaynor who seemed less enthused about children’s week than I had expected from someone whose previous output has been THIS

I think it’s probably the time constraint but she did seem like she was having to put together these dungarees at gunpoint

but really her only fault was that her straps were slightly too thick for the buckle

Gaynor just wants to make tea dresses and live in peace. STOP BOTHERING HER WITH DUNGAREES AND TAEKWONDO.

An Official Adaptive Dungaree Ranking:
1. Marked Safe From U-boat Attacks
2. Yasmin’s SIngular Stitch From First
3. Stuart’s Dungarees by the Book
4. Gaynor’s Begrudgarees
5. The Pride Thief
6. Dan’s Emo Line Cook
7. Caz’s Placket Attack

Play Dates

For their Transformation Challenge, the sewers were having to turn maternity clothing into play clothes suitable for a toddler. As ever, there were two modes for tackling this challenge: The Extremely Sensible, helmed of course by Gaynor who produced the sort of outfit you’d wear to a jazzercise class for the over 60s at a local community center

and of course the extremely fun and always chaotic Panicked Fugue State in which you lose all sense of taste and practicality, resulting in you stepping away from your mannequin at the end of the 90 minutes and realising you’ve strung a load of bunting from your baby like the spoils of civil war in a small parish fete and created one of those Japanese baby swiffers

I don’t think anything this episode encapsulated Children’s Week better than Kit starting out with a really good idea

and in less than 2 minutes crapping it up so much that Sara Pascoe had to impose a flap ban upon you because any toddler wearing the jumpsuit who caught even a moderate updraft would become airborne

that’s an irresponsible amount of phalanges.

Kit wasn’t the only one to do The Most™ because as the judges discussed the necessity of their play outfits not being a trip hazard – Dan immediately grabbed the entire spool of green fringe for his high concept Popstar Play Date

I’m not so sure the final result is Taylor Swift so much as it is Suzie Toot’s Ugliest Dress runway outfit in which she looked like the Nexus point of every adaptation of The Grinch

and just to really try and sell the popstar fantasy, Dan had even made a microphone toy

although Esme thought it was a bedazzled cudgel and the toddler was actually roleplaying as the law enforcement of a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen Christmas Wonderland disaster

I vividly remember spending an afternoon playing with my friends as we pretended to be chefs on a ship, which is only a little bit weirder than Stuart’s afternoon of pretending to be a back alley Victorian surgeon using nothing but a hat pin, a letter opener and 4 straws he stole from an egg cream vendor to remove someone’s appendix

the resulting outfit did at least appear marginally normal so long as you didn’t make direct eye contact with it

but any prolonged viewing of it and you begin to notice that every single thing is slightly too short or too long and the back is a sort of Chinese puzzle box which feels like it might release all evil into the world if you open it

“all evil” being how I do indeed describe children.

But at least Stuart had a whole mannequin inside of his jolly cursed sarcophagus, Caz’s sleeves were too narrow and she’d had given up on limbs all together

the colour coordination was not enough to save her from being last place as Caz’s No Good, Very Bad Day in the Haberdashery continued.

Lastly we have Orla and Yasmin were ended up vying it out for first and second place. Which went exactly as you’d expect because Yasmin seems to have at some point in her life made a deal with a devil that in the fine print of the contract states she can never win

it’s a really cute outfit and the use of the shirring at the back was very well done. As was the tasteful use of the daisy chain trim – it looks like something a toddler would actually wear! Unfortunately for her, so did Orla’s

and Esme very much continues to be terrible at Transformation Challenge Pictionary

it’s *clearly* a radioactive giraffe that’s undergoing intense medical treatment to improve its longevity

I bet *someone’s* regretting giving Orla that fabric for her crusty giraffe

I for one fully respect Orla’s rise as The Haberdashery Villain.

An Official Playtime Transformation Challenge:
1. Kids Love radioactive Safari Animals
2. Yasmin’s Tasteful Use of Fringe *pointedly looks at Dan*
3. Gaynor’s Jazzercising 64 Year Old Toddler
4. Dan’s Novelty Singing Christmas Tree
5. Kit’s Floor Cleaner
6. A Toddler Can Be A Cursed Puzzle Box
7. Limbs Optional Caz

When I Grow Up I Wanna Have Boo-[NOT FOR KID’S WEEK]

For their Made to Measure Challenge, the sewers were creating fancy dress costumes inspired by what they wanted to be when they grew up. Despite enjoying the odd afternoon pretending to be a chef on a ship, my real career goal was to work as a nature documentary maker. That was until they started putting the “Making Of” segments at the end of Planet Earth episodes and I saw a group of people having to spend 3 days up to their shins in water trying to film a rare species of Peruvian frog and very quickly put that dream on hold. I am a very delicate flower, I barely survived camping through a minor storm on the Isle of Wight – I bailed on the tent and slept in the car while my family suffered for the rest of the night. I do not know why I was the only one in the car.

Safe to say, I felt a deep kinship with Stuart having at one point in his life wanted to be The Artic Saviour we all needed

and instead growing up to be The Mild Mannered Man Who Cruises Sensibly To The Semifinals of Sewing Bee. He may not be saving the Arctic or doing anything to help the penguins but he is a valued component of the Sewing Bee Ecosystem

it’s a very good little outfit – and warm! So warm in fact I think it may have been a workplace violation as his model began to struggle to form complete sentences and became increasingly flushed. Glove making does still continue to haunt the Sewing Bee as Stuart’s mittens had the same understanding of human anatomy as me drawing hands without a reference

it’s a crapshoot as to where I put the thumb every time, too.

There were of course a couple of performing jobs, it doesn’t really come as a surprise that the person wandering around in a little homemade cowboy romper wanted to be Elton John when they grow up

and has successfully secured themself a 1 degree of separation from an Elton John dinner date

as far as Elton John costumes go, it was one of the tamer outfits, having been inspired by his debut performance in the white dungarees

a lot of the outfits were quite parred down because due to the constraints of filming with children, the sewers did only have 3 and a half hours to do this which is nearly half the time for most other Made to Measures. However, that’s no excuse for Gaynor having enough time to just sit there waiting for a cappuccino and have her model draw pictures like she’s babysitting her in a café with no fun food on the menu

and her outfit was VERY simple, immaculately sewn, but simple in a way that felt like there were definitely ways she could’ve done a moderate amount of extra work

but I think she just got caught up in the ~narrative~ of very seriously wanted to do a replica of the ballet dress she wore as a child

which is nice and all but it’s hard to be enthused about it when you’ve got Dan running around desperately trying to get the world’s lumpiest ringleader pulled into existence

he bit off way more than he could chew but I do appreciate the amount of effort he tried to pack into just 3.5 hours – Patrick’s tailors take 2 days to outfit the average ringleader!

but I do like that at least one of the sewers seems to have achieved their dream careers. Or at least mostly, Dan at least works ringmaster adjacent

I will personally help him mutiny the gay circus and install him as leader. We don our stilts and ride our RSCPA approved dressage ponies at dawn!

Dan wasn’t the only one making a coat though as Yasmin executed some of the most poorly timed Labour politician cosplay you’ve ever seen (I don’t know if there are previous instances of this happening)

it is alarmingly accurate and as such Baby Jess Phillips over there is a jumpscare every time they cut to her. Thank you Yasmin, I hate it.

I was also worried that Caz was biting off more than she could chew with her attempt as shining the Zandra Rhodes symbol into the sky to save her from almost certain elimination as she’d bottomed both the previous challenges

but to be fair to Caz, Zandra probably should slide into the old DMs because this outfit was really quite spectacular and just further cements my opinion that Caz is a designer rather than a sewer

the combination of prints and shapes is bonkers but it is pulled together so well – it takes a very specific person to pull this off and that person is also the sort of person that’s a fan of Zandra. She knocked this out of the park the moment she had the little girl who was her model contribute to the textile creation

I’d happily put this outfit up there as one of the all time best for Sewing Bee.

Lastly we have Orla whose childhood career goal was to be a Beekeeper, and she may not know that much about beekeeping, but she does know how to both unionise and commit adultery with a bee

The first thing I’m doing with a time machine is going back to 1883 to explain the plot of The Bee Movie to a Victorian childhood and watching their brain leak out of their ears.

Orla’s outfit was very successful in the end with Esme really being able to tell it was a beekeeper, I can’t imagine how

YOU THINK? What else could it possibly be, Esme? Photosensitive Bride on her wedding day? Sia but she’s a cricket player now? Chimp Attack Survivor From The Movie Nope?

I mean, in reality I think as 5 year olds we all want to be chimp attack survivors but it turns out chimp attacks are a lot less of a problem than you think. Orla’s combination Beekeeper and Chimp Attack Survivor from the Movie Nope was really good, there was an issue with the zipper but the fluting on the hat and the bee on the back were cute touches that elevated the outfit to a whimsical childishness

honestly, could’ve done with more bees but time was tight for everyone so I’ll take what I can get.

An Unofficial Aspiration Career Outfit Rankings:
1. Help me Zandra Rhodes. You’re my only hope!
2. Orla’s Bride of The Bee Movie
3. Labour? I Hardly Know Her!
4. The Only Achievable Elton John Outfit
5. Stuart, The Artic Saviour!
6. Gaynor The Ball-eh Dancer
7. CIRCUS MUTINY!

There was no real choice but to give Garment of the Week to Caz again, they really tried to reason themselves into giving it to Flintstones Kids Jess Phillips. But it could really only be Caz’s

the elimination was clearly between Gaynor’s oversimplification and Dan saying this at the beginning of the episode

YOU WALKED INTO THIS ONE!

I will be sad to see Dan go, I love the relationship he seemed to have formed with Esme. I think he’s just one of those people that is liked by everyone who meets him, he’s got such a unique charisma about him, it’s no real surprise that he’s ended up as an entertainer.

And so, 6 go on to Art Week