Diva down!

They unfortunately released the butthole cut.

Letting Your Bias Hang Out

Kicking off the final was the challenge of creating a Bias-cut Dress. A deceptively simple challenge given that it’s only 5 pieces as opposed to the 17 pattern pieces of challenges gone by

however, in order to give it the slinkiness and drape that the dress needs, the sewers were having to work with satins. As a non-sewer I don’t really know what working with satin is like, but as a reality TV enthusiast, I do know that whenever someone on Project Runway blew their entire Mood Fabric allowance on the stuff, Tim Gunn would pull this face

and of course, not all satins are equal as we very much found out during this challenge. Yasmin may have pulled a Homer and stuffed her ears with wax to resist the siren song of the prettiest fabrics on the shelf

however, Caz pulled a Butes and jumped right into this mess – but who could blame her, this fabric is *so* damn pretty

but it has the same physiology as a blob fish, built specifically for the hydrostatic pressure of the Marianas Trench and when brought to the surface is turned to blancmange by gravity

and because these are expensive fabrics and this was anything but a zero waste pattern, once Caz had touched that beautiful creeping death trap she was bonded to it for the next 5 hours

to Caz’s credit, she still had a pretty decent dress on her mannequin by the end of it – granted they had to do the judging extremely quickly because the dress was growing like it had had toxic waste spilled on it and would soon be the slinkiest Kaiju since Manda

the hemline was fluting quite badly and her straps were twisted, however the back of the dress was lying stunningly.

While Caz was gradually being smothered by an ever increasing surface area of satin and princess seams that stretched out like a hallway in your nightmares, Orla just clung to her fabric knowing that it would never betray her like that

you either die the hero or live long enough to become the new villain edit

and while Orla’s fabric had stretched slightly on the back, the rest of her dress was immaculately well sewn

that deep plum is gorgeous too.

Yasmin also ended up with an incredibly good dress in this stunning teal satin

but the sewing was very much second in Yasmin’s priorities, her primary objective in this final being that everyone has to know how great her wife is

there is no stronger force in this world than a wife-guy lesbian.

An Official Bias-cut Dress Ranking:
1. Orla’s Villainous Plum
2. The Dress is Nice, But Have you Heard About My Wife?
3. Caz’s Sudden 5km of Satin

Sheer to Sheer

For their final Transformation Challenge, the sewers were having to to recycle a selection of sheer clothing into some moderately less sheer clothing. Decency was obviously a major consideration in this challenge, which seemed to operate on the assumption that whoever was wearing the created clothing would not be wearing underwear

which does lead me to believe that Esme is commando at all given moments. And if that’s not the mental image you want, don’t worry in about 30 seconds all you’re going to be able to think about is buttholes.

This was one of the kinder finale Transformation Challenges considering last year they had to work with paper party supplies – which Orla might honestly have been happier to use considering the Cheans Situation

she had grand plans of creating some sort of 3D structured heart out of her netting

however it had about as much stability as Caz’s ever ballooning satin dress, which at time of writing has swaddled all of Wakefield – the military has been deployed.

Upon realising that she was not going to be able to create her big brown heart, Orla’s synapses fried and her brain started making dial-up modem noises

and she sort of just started gathering and puckering her brown netting to create what she was having to gaslight herself into believing were flowers

because the reality of the situation was to accept that what she was actually creating was a dress covered in buttholes

I absolutely love that the back of the dress was completely unfilmmable because Orla hadn’t created modesty so much as she’d created a trompe l’oeil anus

but sure, they’re “peonies” says Patrick as he delicately tries not to touch nor make direct eye contact with the gaping sphincter before him

did nobody tap her on the shoulder to tell her “Babe, you’re just layering buttholes. Please stop.”

While Orla was trapped in a deleted scene from Beau Is Afraid, Yasmin was having a sheer nightmare of her own having probably not utilised her time in the best way possible and ended up with a funeral outfit for someone that doesn’t much care for the deceased

which might be Yasmin putting too much of herself into the dress given her increasing look of disgust as Patrick listed types of sheer fabric

on the plus-side, it doesn’t look like an anal totem pole and the treatment of the fabric on the bus ist really pretty and interesting. It’s just the skirt being so ordinary that lets the look down a bit. Especially when compared to Caz who had done a really good job of combining different fabrics and treatments

this is incredible? It has such a cool modern streetwear quality to it and is probably one of the most wearable Transformation Challenge creatios. Which is good and bad – good in that, it’s a very good show of technical skill and planning. And “bad” in that sometimes what you want from the Transformation Challenge is a quadrusphincteral abomination

I need Orla to know this is one of the most horrible things anyone has ever made and it is amazing. 10/10 – no notes. I want to wear it for Halloween. Couple’s Halloween costume with Marcus’s weird muscular sausage casing?

I bring this “garment” up at every available moment – I have been told to shut up about it *several* times.

An Official Sheer Transformation Ranking:
1. An Actual Outfit Has Hit The Transformation Challenge
2. It’s F-ass-hion, look it up, sweaty.
3. I Came To This For The Sandwiches At The Wake

Top Trompes

As ever, for the final Made to Measure Challenge the sewers are making garments for their loved ones – Caz for her daughter Florence

Orla for her sibling, Ro

and Yasmin for her fiancee Sophie

and the brief for this last challenge was Trompe L’Oeil, which of course is French for “not entirely possible in a 5 and a half hour time limit.” Although, I do actually think this probably the best, on a whole, final runway we’ve ever had because everything did at least feel finished and not like they’d totally squandered their chances of winning. Even Yasmin who spent about half an hour doing the hokey cokey with her collar finished her dress

part of her trompe l’oeil effect being an illusory tie made with the non-standard burrito method that I regularly deployed when I had to wear a tie at school every friday

ultimately the tie did look a little bit like it had been made by a disgruntled Taco Bell worker during the last hours of their 11pm shift

but the main component of Yasmin’s outfit was the very Playboy Bunny leotard illusion over the top of the orange dress

that copper looks INCREDIBLE on Sophie (Yasmin better be making her ALL the dresses in it) and was clearly the right choice for her. I think the illusion would’ve been more impactful on a more nude dress and really amp up the cheekiness of the illusory leotard and you could’ve still had the office-wear tie detail work with it.

A lot of the Trompe l’oeil effects came down to being 3D, which isn’t what I associate with being Trompe L’oeil and I’m assuming the brief specified that there had to be a 3D detail. To *me*, Trompe L’oeil is more of a 2D artform that create a 3D illusion – they mentioned Emily Blunt’s Oscars dress as though the trompe l’oeil effect was the straps

and you know, NOT THE BEDAZZLED Y-FRONTS?

I would’ve been interested to see what someone like Saffie could’ve done with screen-printing in this challenge, given it’s things like this that I associate with trompe l’oeil fashion (with varying amounts of more realism)

I think they perhaps realised it would’ve ended up too similar to the Pop Art Challenge and diverted to having 3D elements.

While Yasmin flip-flopped with a collar in front of her wife, Orla was being drowned by homophobic pool noodles

if it didn’t work, Orla could always fall back onto her Plan B option of the Trompe L’oeil buttholes

She had made this extremely difficult for herself by both making this a pool party transformation challenge and wanting the illusion to be completely invisible from the front – which *kind of* worked but only if you viewed Ro from one very particular angle and closed one eye and even then… dubious

and then the reveal worked purely because Ro perfectly understood the assignment of making this as Eurovision as possible

it’s not exactly a North Macedonian Glitterball Waistcoat

but my immediate reaction was “this is very Montaigne” and then we got the Montaigne backing track

that makeup? Perfection. We don’t give enough credit to the Sewing Bee makeup department for how much effort they put into making the outfits come to life. Orla’s dress is by no means perfectly sewn but the vibe is everything it had to be.

Lastly we have Caz who I think had the best Trompe L’oeil pay off purely on account of her doing something anatomical with her ribcage dress inspired by the open heart surgery she had just 4 years ago and was still somehow only the second most macabre anatomical rendering this episode

Christ alive it’s a good outfit and Florence looks like an absolute superstar in it, definitely worth taking a few ribs to the face for

It’s like that heart surgery dinner theatre dish on MasterChef went to the Met Gala

When somebody asks me what kind of autism I have, it’s the kind where I slowly collect heart surgery references on British Reality TV – c’mon Bake Off, one of you has to have an angioplasty Bakewell Tart in your somewhere.

An Unofficial Trompe L’oeil Dress Ranking:
1. Caz’s EMT Gala Dress
2. Can You All Just Look At How Cool My Wife Is?
3. Orla’s RainBOO!

One of the best things about Sewing Bee is you get to the final and you’re kind of rooting for everyone, perhaps for wildly different reason – Yasmin because you want to see love win for once this goddamn year

Orla because she has excellent taste in Eurovision’s angriest boys

and Caz because her ideas always feel like she threw a ferret into a ball pit of concepts

any of them would’ve been a worthy winner but there can only be one and I think the success of that final made to measure, really tipped it over for Caz

her entire run on the show has been a real smash and I do hope it’s helped her realise just how talented she is.

And a massive congratulations to Yasmin and Orla

I’ve loved their points of view from day one and am so glad we’ve had them along for this ride. This final felt like a perfect capstone to their runs on the show and they should both be immensely proud of that.

And thank you for reading the recaps and putting up with my nonsense – I’ve had some extremely kind words about them that I’ve been hugely grateful for. And if you have enjoyed them and in anyway feel able to, here’s a link to my Kofi where you can drop a small tip – it really helps support the blog but your readership will always be the most important.

And now, we end on the Alternative Montage!

and that’s it for another year!