We’re reclaiming “Bosh”.

Did you self-draft this villain edit?

Pride Before a Plus Fours

Starting off their timewarp to Patrick’s home decade in the 1920s, the sewers were having to make a pair of Plus Fours – so called because they both finish 4 inches below the knee and will allow you to smuggle at least 4 bags of Pear Drops into the Nickelodeon to watch the latest Fred Goodwins picture with your good time gal

and in the grand scheme of Sewing Bee semi-finals that in the last 3 years have included trench coats, Victorian evening dresses and replicating the works of once in a generation designer Cristobal Balenciaga (still can’t believe they did that), the trousers probably aren’t the most complicated pattern challenge they could’ve flung their way. I mean, it’s a pair of trousers how hard could they possibly be?

I am truly obsessed with the complete and total character assassination of Kit in this Pattern Challenge – it is just 20 minutes of them looking to camera like Jenna Maroney singing “SECRET PLAN! REVENGE ON MY MIND!”

Sewing Bee doesn’t need a villain but boy did they decide that we would be burning this trouser psychic at the stake this week

the only thing really stopping a complete and total Saleming being that they can’t possibly be a witch because they can’t work out basic percentages

it’s 75%

66.6^.%

Kit’s pastel purple trousers were very well constructed, especially given that they’d chosen a fabric so thick you’d pass out before you so much as got to the golf course

it does hang very nicely but the thickness of the fabric did mean that it couldn’t pass through the buckles on the cuffs

so Kit had to resort to some non-industry standard back alley Victorian dentistry to remove the teeth of the buckles with a steel ruler, fabric shears and a wooden mallet

which ultimately meant you could get them on, but they’d never coming off and you would be forever fused to your Plus Fours like Eddie Brock and Venom

and there would somehow be just as much erotic fanart.

The biggest tell that this week we’d be pushing Kit off a cliff named Hubris was that they were really hamming up the competitiveness between them and Orla

and used SEVERAL shots of Orla contemplating pattern pieces while pulling increasingly befuddled faces as opposed to Kit’s more vibes-based Tarot reading approach to trouser construction

and then Orla went on to pretty decisively win this particular challenge with incredibly well tailored and constructed Plus Fours

her fabric choice was very smart – being both lightweight and a solid colour whereas Yasmin and Caz had both chosen suitably weighted fabrics but both had gone for checkered patterns which Patrick and Esme were very much bullying them into pattern matching

however Yasmin was under no circumstances going to be peer pressured into matching that pattern

and then I’m sure went and screamed into the void when Esme said she should’ve made even less effort to match the pattern despite having put no effort into trying

given the pattern was so muted and barely showed up unless you got super close to it

I do think it was probably unnecessary to fully pattern match, but she could’ve maybe at least done just the waistband

and then Caz’s was such a busy, small print there was hardly a point in bothering to pattern match it either

Caz’s was actually my favourite fabric – I believe it’s the same one that Stuart threatened to make his babydoll dress out of

I am now sad we didn’t get to witness that very normal man being driven absolutely insane by trying to construct 1,000,000 gathers out of that wool until his eyes twitched and his synapses burnt to cinders. To preserve her cognitive functions, Caz was taking the slow and steady approach

she was very much a tortoise in hare’s clothing

this did not have an Aesopian payoff, as she did have the most noticeably “unfinished” trousers because she hadn’t got around to pressing the seams

MAYBE BECAUSE SOMEONE BULLIED HER INTO PATTERN MATCHING, ESME????

An Official Plus Fours Ranking:
1. Orla’s A+ Fours
2. Yasmin’s Imperfect Match
3. Caz’s Unpressing Matter
4. Kit’s Eternal Trouser Prison

The Epic Highs and Po-Lows of High School Football

For their 1920s Pattern Challenge we were being treated to a history lesson on Polo Shirts, which mostly amounted to everyone muttering “Oh, polo shirts were invented in the 1920s?” in hushed conspiratorial tones because it’s a Yes and No situation. They were originally worn by polo players in 19th century India but that would involve talking about The Big C (the other one. NO, THE OTHER OTHER ONE) so 1920s René Lacoste normalised them polos as tennis attire in the 1920s after being inspired by temporally ambiguous polo players from *somewhere*

WHERE WERE THE POLO PLAYERS FROM, AMBER? WHERE WERE THE POLO PLAYERS FROM?

The task at hand for the sewers was to create a colour blocked outfit using up to 5 of the available polo shirts. Having landed at the bottom of the ranking in the Pattern Challenge, Kit obviously knew they had some real catching up to do if they wanted a chance of making the final. So it was time to deploy some egregious Esme pandering with a recreation of the amorphous dress

which honestly, was really impressively made given how much everyone struggled to make the actual amorphous dress with 5 hours and a pattern to follow several years ago

and it was obviously catnip to Esme but I do think it thoroughly deserved to come first on account of it being the best execution of the colour blocked motif.

While Kit dangled a sexy carrot in front of Esme, Orla was going for the Jafar approach of trying to hypnotise the judges with her spiralling crop top

that’s weird, I suddenly feel like my boobs are bigger?

There was a lot of pretty impressive sewing in Orla’s spiralled design – I don’t know if I’d truly consider it colour blocking, but I did like the sort of early 2000s Tim Burton x Groovy Chick collaboration of it all

I want to own this pencil case? It may not have been pure catnip to Esme, but put that in front of every girl who thought going to Blue Banana but not buying anything was a personality and had a Nightmare Before Christmas phase in 2004 and Orla would’ve won hands down.

Caz and Yasmin had a little more of a struggle with their colour coordination however both of them used a lot more of their polo shirts – making features of the plackets and the cuffs. Yasmin ended up with athleisure wear for a court jester

the judges did think the black triangle was a little heavy for the outfit, which I agree with. We were so close to having Trans Pride William Sommers. Maybe next year. I was surprised that Yasmin came last, I just wasn’t a fan of Caz’s drop waisted gown that looks like default clothing from Old School RuneScape

BUT! It was more successful from the back

but I do think I liked it all a bit more when her mannequin looked like the leader of the weirdest D&D party you’ve ever seen

you’ve got the human Arcane Archer, the gnome Glamour Bard, the tiefling Phoenix Sorcerer and the Battlerager Barbarian who is just a guy that refuses to wear a shirt.

I have chosen to reject the customer feedback that I should talk about RuneScape and Dungeons and Dragons much less.

An Official Polo Shirt Transformation Ranking:
1. The Amorphous Dress 2: Polo Shirt Boogaloo
2. Orla’s HypnoTits
3. Caz’s Bank Standing Attire
4. Yasmin’s Heavy Jester

Flapper? I Hardly Know Her!

The Made to Measure was a really fun one with the sewers having to create outfits for incredibly specific 1920s events and I was delighted with just how specific everyone went. I think my super specific party is probably one of the Tutmania gatherings at the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor following of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb in 1922, sparking a resurgence in Egyptomania of the worst kind. I’m not sure that’s *entirely* true, they were publically unwrapping and consuming mummies in the 1800s. This is more “costumes that get you side-eyed at the Halloween party”

terrible concept? OH YES. But I think I could get away with it if I stayed away from that one on the left and didn’t let the BBC anywhere near The Bangles or the Harry Von Tilzer back catalogue.

In terms of the sewers, Caz’s was probably the most hyper specific, with her dress going to one (1) of Kate Meyrick’s prison release parties (there were five). My personal favourite Kate Meyrick fact is that she kept opening illegal nightclubs at the same premises under increasingly less convincing aliases. You cannot say she didn’t rightfully earn her title of Queen of the Nightclubs as much by reputation as insistence alone.
Caz was celebrating her release from prison with a champagne coloured high-low hemmed dress

that colour looks STUNNING on her model and there’s a lot to like about the style of the dress – the drape of the skirt is particularly beautiful but it is just a scooch too tight on the hips which really shows in that duchess satin.

Yasmin wasn’t so much going for a specific event as she was a specific location, opting for a sailor-style dress because the sailor uniform was the hanky code of 1920s sapphic culture. There was a particular bar in Paris known as Le Monocle, with the monocle (and pastiched upper-class male dandyism) also being something of a symbol which never got mentioned on the show but they did use reference images from Le Monocle

and I imagine it’s why her model had the monocle

it’s a very cute outfit – it toes a fine line of being overly costumey

but I do also think that’s partly the point and it was certainly leaving Patrick with a lot to consider

Patrick, it’s not too late to be a 2020s lesbian

We’re making omelettes tonight!

The least specific of the lot was probably Orla’s, which was for someone celebrating the “Flapper Vote” which allowed women over 21 to vote in the 1929 election, so it was a time where Labour advertised equality

while the Conservatives stooped to fearmongering through tasseomancy

honestly, bring back political debates centering exclusively around the price of tea per pound and how this affects psychics. I would be so much less tired.

Orla’s was probably the most stereotypically 1920s with the dropped waist and the cloche hat in a chartreuse-olive colour that I adored

I don’t love that piece of trim as the gather but the handkerchief skirt hung really beautifully, especially with the subtle gold shift in the fabric

it’s SO pretty.

While the other three had all used authentic 1920s patterns, Kit had once gain opted to draft their own which was their first mistake given that this challenge was living or dying by authenticity. While you could see the 1920s inspiration in Kit’s final product, it was a little bit Week 2 salsa dress for woman aged 55 who is about to be eliminated on Strictly Come Dancing

the ruffles have a lot of very pretty movement and I think given the time constraint and trickiness of working with chiffon, I think they did quite well by them. I loved the inspiration behind the dress more than I love the final result with Kit being inspired by Hansi Sturm, the drag queen jewel in the crown of Berlin’s Eldorado Club

I do kind of wish they’d used a male model in drag to really lean into the theme. And also told the story about how she apparently would regularly end her shows by throwing her fake boobs at the orchestra, and there were many times that Kit looked like they’d like to pack this challenge by throwing something at the orchestra that kept playing the tuba music EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. they cut to them having a mare

luckily Sara had been upgraded from Kit’s Personal Seamstress

to Kit’s Personal Counsellor and Tuba Banisher

that’ll lift their spirits

ESME. Not now, Kit’s having a crisis and their model is dealing with the fact she’s about to be dressed like every duffer partnered with Anton du Beke all at once

at least you get to wear that really nice lipstick?

An Unofficial 20s Occasion Dress Ranking:
1. Yasmin’s Sailor of Sappho
2. Orla’s Nouveau-ter Riche
3. Caz’s Tight Meyrick
4. Performing the Salsa, it’s Jacqui Smith!

Given the insightfulness of her inspiration and just how well she’d made everything, I was thrilled that Yasmin took the last of the Garments of the Week

personal, interesting, well made – she knocked it out the park.

Then it came to the elimination – Orla was obviously safe and going to the final alongside Yasmin whereas Caz was in the bottom 2 for all three challenges while Kit was the clear last place in two of them but won the Transformation. In the first half of the series, I had these two pinned as fighting for the win and given how much agonising there was over the choice of who was going, I think everyone else did. I really thought they were going to go for a non-elimination and have a four sewer finale, which I think had some solid reasoning. However, Kit’s Made to Measure just wasn’t finished so while I’m absolutely gutted to see them going out so close to the final, I can’t fully disagree with the decision

I’ve adored Kit’s point of view and I’ve loved the effort they’ve put into showcasing that and their skills – I don’t think anyone on the show has ever self-drafted as much as they have. They’re a damn talented sewer and I look forward to seeing their future projects.

and so! We have our final 3!