The Museé Rodin kindly requests you do not disturb The Thinker.

This recap has women on it.

Baby D’oh

Opening up Art Week was the Pattern Challenge in which the sewers had to recreate a babydoll dress inspired by the ones favoured by Grayson Perry and women who self-identify as quirky

the sewers were also asked to choose a fabric that expresses a part of their identity – which didn’t really come in to play much because the judges couldn’t really grill Caz as to why she’d constructed a babydoll dress out of Blade Runner 2049 promotional materials, we just have to accept that That’s Caz

but for the most part I do feel like the fabrics matched the sewers – Orla and Kit both imprinted on these brushstroke prints because they have the vibe of kids that spent every lunch break hiding in the artroom (my people)

Stuart had gone for this upholstery looking fabric because he’s always dressed a bit like a sofa in a Wallace and Gromit animation

Yasmin’s lesbian lizard brain kicked in and she grabbed the most feminine looking thing in the room

Gaynor however is a sensible 72 years old and thus suffers from the septuagenarian disposition of being unable to turn down anything covered in a lavender print

but to be fair to Gaynor, part of the point of a babydoll dress is that when you wear it you get to look like a cursed porcelain doll and if anyone achieved that, it was hers

I do also think Sara did her a MASSIVE favour by bullying her into adding the contrast collar

one thing I did find strange was that the way the instructional frilled goatse diagram was delivered, made it sound like the sewers were asked to do contrasting collars or frills

however only Yasmin, Orla and a Post-haranguing Gaynor ended up doing their collars or frills in different fabrics which suggests to me it was not explicitly stated? And I get expecting the sewers to make smart choices is part of it, but if that’s going to be *such* a big part of your judging… maybe put it in the specification of the brief.

Speaking of these bloody collars – the sewers had 4 and a half hours for the whole challenge and more than half the time was spent making the collars alone

and then once they’d finished sewing a seemingly endless length of fabric at a 3mm allowance while fending off a constant migraine

they then had a Sisyphean task of gathering just about every other part of the dress – the sleeves, the waist, the sleeves again and again and again – just when you thought that gathering was done, you’d turn over the page of the regenerative promethean liver of a pattern guide and BAM! More gathering

Sara Pascoe of course being both the liver-eating eagle and the steep slope in this cocktail of Greek tragedy

this has the exact same energy as Michelle Visage saying “Good chat, Tess.” after a savage critique from the judges and Tess Daly doing nothing to help (a clip I will do unspeakable things to find) – Stuart is my diva and I actually really liked his dress, I just wish he’d done a contrast frill to match that deeper pink shade

I mean, I hate babydoll dresses with the same burning intensity as Yasmin finding out she has to gather the sleeve AGAIN!? but I like the colours of the fabric. There was of course the issue of the side seams now being front and back seams – how on earth could that have happened?

I enjoy it when you can pinpoint the precise moment a sewer stopped caring about a challenge

Gaynor’s investment in Art Week lived and died by John George Brown postcards and she found herself confronted by Grayson Perry and Andy Warhol – IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR AN OIL PAINTING? That being said, this might be the most Grayson Perry of all the babydoll dresses purely on account of it looking like something your gran wears it to bed

there was a slight issue with her collar not meeting in the centre of the neckline and a few dangling gathering stitches but for the most part it was pretty reliably sewn.
[only on rereading this did I realise I’d written about Gaynor’s twice]

Stuart wasn’t the only one to have side seam issues, although at least Orla’s were still technically side seams, they just didn’t match up quite right between the bodice and skirt

and to be honest, Orla’s did look like it came from the same Damart catalogue as Gaynor’s

I think it’s just the pastels that make it look like it has to be specifically worn while you read a Danielle Steel book by the light of a tiffany lamp. Whereas the vibrancy of something like Yasmin’s smock of sapphic appreciation at least feels like it can go somewhere other than to your kitchen for a biscuit in the middle of the night

Yasmin may have been screaming into the void of endless gathering, but this dress was immaculately sewn and I hope she’s as bloody proud of it as she should be because this seemed like a grueling pattern challenge. And Kit was hot on her heels with their babydoll

despite having the time to neatly press their hem, there were some uneven frills on the collar and some of the gathers on the waistline had digivolved into pleats. One more level and they’d have become Patrick Grant in bondage gear with a gun

_{(I realise this is completely incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t a Drawfee fan, so here’s the full video of Karina explaining Digimon evolution as opposed to Digimon evolution: https://youtu.be/RzeZLASMzjY?t=117)}

but Kit delivering more pleats in a gathering challenge than Gaynor delivered in the pleating challenge (I’LL NEVER LET IT GO, GAYNOR) left the goal wide open for Yasmin’s first win and she could barely contain herself

this Princess Diana ass reaction <3 MY QUEEN!

An Official Babydoll Dress Ranking:
1. The Smock of Sapphic Yearning
2. Kit’s Stroke With Second Place
3. Replicant Caz
4. Orla’s Rich Tea Before Bed
5. A Cursed Porcelain Doll
6. Stuart’s Babydoll Sofa

Are You Smocking Me?

Sadly for the Art Week Transformation Challenge, the sewers weren’t having to create garments from the paintings that don’t get authenticated on Fake or Fortune… One day we’ll get some hodge podge bondage wear made from a fake William Somerville Shanks piece. But for now, the sewers were transforming painters’ protective gear

and in the vein of the art kids that loved to turn a t-shirt into the world’s most lopsided crop top, the garments had to be asymmetrical. After she was criticised for maybe not pushing the babydoll dress challenge far enough, Gaynor going to think about pushing the boat out in the Transformation Challenge for at least 5 minutes

Nope. You’ll get a little bit of a knee and you’ll be grateful for that, you cad!

Gaynor’s commitment to only creating garments to wear on your Saga Cruise down the Danube is admirable in its stubbornness alone, but at some point you’ve got to realise that Charlie Hydesing it for the last 15 minutes while everyone bucks and grinds around you, is not *the best* look

she did at least, ironically, give the leaderboard a nice symmetry as it was bookended by her Just A Skirt™ at the bottom and Orla’s really quite amazing pleated skirt at the top

I adore this and would kill to own it. God knows how I’d style it or ever pull it off – I have one look and it’s Sad Woman In A Rossetti Painting. I honestly think it’s one of the best Transformation Garments we’ve seen because it does seem so genuinely wearable *and* stylish. Whereas something like Kit’s is really good

but it’s going to one very specific Pride event and that’s it. I did enjoy the pondering of what you’d wear with it

and while Patrick’s answer of a green speedo is probably correct, I would unironically like to see someone wearing it while also wearing Orla’s skirt

it’s giving apocalyptic wimbledon match.

I did also really like Caz’s on the grounds of the colour combination alone – the pink paint splatters on the khaki is unusual in a way that just works really well to me

I wasn’t overly taken with her final garment though, I just think the shape was a little generic and amongst the first silhouettes that you think of when you think of an symmetrical dress

with quite a a little less skirt it would feel like a dress that one of the Non-Beyonce members of Destiny’s Child would’ve had to wear during their Survivor promo era – a time which included this incredibly poorly aged unga-bunga fun fur nonsense

I think Beyonce must wake up in cold sweats remembering having to wear 1 and a half rabbits stapled to her.

Yasmin had also gone for a dress and apparently hadn’t had enough fun with gathering as she bulked it out with a slew of ruffles

I think the silhouette is really successful but could perhaps have been pushed and exaggerated even more. I think the only thing really letting it down though is the placement of that one paint splatter, it’s just a little heavy but that is the luck of the draw with clothing. Caz and Orla both got really lucky with their fabrics whereas some kind of drew, well, total ass

I think the most unfortunate was Stuart who got probably the darkest coloured fabric against which the paint just didn’t pop, so he was already fighting an uphill struggle

so I can see why the judges were initially a little disappointed by his garment because it didn’t immediately read as being paint splattered

but when you get up close, there’s a lot of really well done and fiddly detail work that I think kind of got overlooked

if you told me that the Stuart who thought a sleeveless blouse with a knotted detail at the front was “his one good idea” would make this, I don’t think I’d have believed you. Also, it’s Art Week and his sleeves looks like Whistler’s Mother, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT

I am the proud sitting president of the Stuart Apologist Society.

An Official Asymmetrical Garment Ranking:
1. The Bottom of my Apocalyptic Tennis Fantasy
2. The Top of my Apocalyptic Tennis Fantasy
3. Shades of Kelly Rowlands Past
4. Yasmin’s Unfortunate Gathering Habit
5. Seeing Whistler’s Mother In A Blouse Like People See Jesus In A Grilled Cheese
6. Just A Skirt™

Pop Goes The Warhol

The Art Week Made to Measure is always one of my favourite challenges of a series but I was sceptical of Pop Art as a source of inspiration – mostly because they’ve done it on Drag Race before and it resulted in several shift dresses with the queens’ own faces screen printed on them a la Warhol’s Marilyn (devastated not to have Saffie in for this challenge, tbh). The output on Sewing Bee was at least a lot more creative and whacky but not devoid of self-branding with Orla’s material being a custom print of her own lips

and from there we ended with a costume for The Jetsons’ production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert

it’s like somebody’s pyjamas took illegal black market steroids and you better not tell anyone about it

there were some issues around the collar but I don’t think it detracts from it looking like a rejected costume for the Eurovision episode of Doctor Who. This outfit was a lot of things and all of them were kind of fabulous.

Despite the time limit of the Made to Measures being enough of a constraint, Kit was only trying to make things harder for themself by producing their outfit out of paper

miraculously there was only ever one heartstopping moment when a ripping sound echoed through the sewing room like an onomatopoeic comic book panel

but it was only a near miss as somehow the tear had happened perfectly in the seam allowance but in having to work so delicately with the DRESS MADE OUT OF PAPER, Kit did run out of time to get the 3D speech bubble appliques they had planned onto the dress

so in the last few seconds of the challenge they cobbled the two pieces into a handbag like Bear Grylls macgyvering the intestines of an eel and a coconut husk into a water purification system

and Patrick took that personally

his personal vendetta against Kit’s extremely ineffective Shein grocery bag was at least eclipsed by his fondness of Kit’s dress which was genuinely really pretty and wearable

Caz had a similar mad dash towards the end of the challenge as she needed a very specific 1 hour and 15 minutes to do her binding but unfortunately Sara doesn’t do a 1 Hour and 15 Minutes left time call

and that lost 15 minutes REALLY shows but I do think the rapid addition of the paper doll tabs, however shoddy, was very necessary if only to at least slightly lessen the fact it looks slightly too much like a sanitary towel

it’s a really fun design though, reminiscent of the Jeremy Scott for Moschino collection in 2017 and that Commes de Garcons dress Lady Gaga wore because everyone kept calling her fat

Yasmin was also going for a similar effect with her profile face cape that feels like it’s from the same place as those whimsical detachable collars that I keep getting advertised on Instagram but am 100% sure they’re not the original designer and if I try to buy them I’d have all my credit card details stolen

she’d also made the white dress underneath but to borrow a phrase from Project Runway: Barefoot Appalachian Li’l Abner Barbie it was a bit of a throwaway piece she’d made entirely because she couldn’t really make her model walk the runway in just the cape. Patrick also thought that the inclusion of a chin on the face would’ve amped up the cartooniness, which he almost certainly only said because Yasmin had performed an accidental genioplasty as she got overeager with the scissors

Girl, name a price. I am desperate to get rid of my current abominable jaw situation and neanderthal of a forehead. I can give you whatever you want so long as it’s £14.64, a bag of Haribo Nostalgix and the answers to today’s NYT Connections puzzle.

Lastly we have Stuart and Gaynor who were continuing to drag their feet through Art Week like the kids who take Art for GCSE completely underestimating the workload – Hi, it’s me. I went on the 2 night trip to London for Blood Brothers, Planet Hollywood and The Natural History Museum then had a mental breakdown and dropped out of school. AND LOOK AT ME NOW! (don’t look at me, I hate to be perceived.)

Gaynor had come armed with not a single Pop Art reference and desperately hoped that the judges politely smiling at the frayed effect on her geometric cutouts was a good sign

it was not

this is so Regina George coded

but the judges were still oddly receptive to Gaynor’s dress which to me looks like a sachet of artisanal vintage mustard

it’s not *not* Pop Art because Andy Warhol did love a condiment and the cutout effect was executed well enough. What I think what ultimately paid off for Gaynor was that she didn’t come armed with a reference and then talk about how she wasn’t doing that reference because it’s too hard- OH MY GOD, STUART WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

and the black piping would probably have really helped sell the effect Stuart was going for but I do think he still made a very successful looking garment

it’s like one of those magic eye puzzles that if you cross your eyes and relax your vision you’ll see the image of Stuart doing everything in his power to avoid saying the word “boobs”

I adore this incredibly normal man.
Patrick compared it to the Alexander McQueen “Plato’s Atlantis” collection, however to me it looks like it’s straight out of the Mary Katrantzou’s 2012 collection

I don’t entirely agree with the judges that Stuart’s didn’t feel Pop Art, I think they were expecting much more of a Lichtenstein and Warhol approach, whereas Stuart may have name dropped Keith Herring, but if he stood there and said “Regrettably, I was inspired Jeff Koonz” – I’d have done a long sigh but seen the vision. Also the sleeves looked amazingly well constructed and nobody said a thing about them

I wanna see a Fanning sister wearing this.

An Unofficial Pop Art Outfit Ranking:
1. Papercuts and Paper Kits
2. Elroy Jetson as Mitzi Del Bra
3. IT’S A PAPER DOLL AND NOTHING ELSE
4. Is My Pro-Stuart Bias Showing?
5. I Can Have a Little A Genioplasty As A Treat?
6. The McDonald’s Mustard Sachets From 1973

There wasn’t a great deal of suspense as to how this would go in terms of Garment of the Week because Kit’s was the only Made to Measure that was universally praised

I am so delighted Kit eventually got it – they’ve been doing so well in the other challenges, it was nice to finally see a Made to Measure coming to such spectacular fruition.

As for the elimination – it was clearly down to Gaynor or Stuart. I genuinely thought Gaynor was going, it’s just that for the last few week’s it’s not felt like she’s actually engaging with the show whereas I feel like Stuart is at least rising to the challenges and pushing his own techniques and knowledge, which is why it’s so frustrating to see him go

it’s not an entirely unfair decision, there was reason enough to give either him or Gaynor the boot but as a television-making decision (flexing my degree, babes) it doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve loved Stuart on the show, I’ve really enjoyed seeing his growth and I think he went away from this process with more than one good idea.

And so, we have our Fantastic Five