The “meat” being the only word to receive a capital letter implies a proper noun.

My ideal summer is none.

Finally, joy has returned to the world! Not to put too much pressure on the backs of the sewers but they are the one thing keeping the world together at this point – in beautiful contrast stitching, no less! Sewing Avengers, assemble!

and yes, if you want to know, it is haunting me that this isn’t in alphabetical order – blame TV Zone UK for compiling a list like a blindfolded ferret was unleashed upon BabyNames.com (and me for not proofreading… they could’ve thrown a badger named Bobithy in there and I’d have popped them on the grid.) So here they are in alphabetical order, still Bobithyless and their Animal Crossing counterparts because yes I am still playing it, I haven’t caught a Napoleon Fish yet because I am bad at fishing and mostly because I cannot pass up the opportunity to point out just how much Anna looks like Mineru, it is genuinely uncanny

and along with new sewers, we have a new host in Sophie Willan because if a comedian gets pregnant, they are obligated to host The Great British Sewing Bee, it’s the maternity equivalent of 2:22 A Ghost Story and British woman who turn 40, eventually the time will come for us all to answer that call

I loved Sophie’s debut as a host and the fact she just grills the contestants like the only interview process she’s ever watched before this is Line of Duty

Anna is H.

In Short Supply

The theme of the week is British Summer because we’re all having a *wonderful* summer partaking in our favourite activities – picnics, G&Ts, discoursing about air conditioning with Americans and SWEATING BALLS

Sophie, I promise you don’t have to be pregnant to be doing that – I’m practically paying rent at Costa because they’ve got great air-con and strong enough wifi for me to watch Iplayer on. And play Hearthstone, A LOT of Hearthstone! Don’t tell the other regulars, one of them asked what I was doing and I panicked and told them I was working on my psychology PHD. I should never go out in public, I cannot be trusted.

So yes… Summer! And for their Pattern Challenge, the sewers were having to make a pair of women’s summer shorts featuring patch pockets, an elasticated back, top stitching and a large gamete producing fake fly

we need to deploy the Butchart Drone to give us a history lesson on why flies are gendered. Inevitably one of the sewers had to get it wrong with Sam’s shorts, much like my own gender, being a little bit topsy-turvy and falling apart at the seams

and he was put firmly in 12th place for daring to ponder if men would ever want cute pink shorts which is a violation of current EHRC guidance and court proceedings begin in September

which does give him enough time to work on Plan B if Plan A: My Scary Legal Wife doesn’t pan out for him. Plan B being Beth’s Jedi mind tricks

the only person standing in Beth’s way of complete victory was Anna and her being the only one to grab a second bolt of fabric and offer up contrasting patch pockets

I personally don’t love them in the red and think they would’ve been better in either blue, white or a gentler ~ecru~

Patrick has never delighted more in a critique than when he got to tell Adele that her white top stitching was too much

and because they had tried to warn her and she hadn’t listened, they lumped her down in 11th place with Sam’s agender fly and Heather having to position these lobsters so carefully as to not have any lobster extremities protruding from the fly

I don’t fully understand why she was so low in the ranking? They were largely very complimentary so it might have been because she didn’t have an elaborately personal reason for having chosen the lobster print as the fabric had to showcase something about themselves. So anyway, Rebecca…

I’m obsessed with everything about Rebecca – the apparent affinity for crabs, the sapphic nails and especially the fact it looks like if she and her wife-to-be did the Dragonball-Z Fusion Dance they’d just become Beanie Feldstein

she is genetically engineered to be on this show and the fact she’s become the defacto explainer of sewing terminology and rules, I think we can assume she’ll be here for a while. Her crab shorts were cute and well made too

I do think the pattern is maybe a bit too large for a garment so small and a time limit that doesn’t really allow for pattern matching. There was a slight misalignment on the pocket and the waistband but that seemed to be a recurring critique for pretty much everyone. I also thought that Minnie’s strawberry patterned shorts were very cute

her pockets were well aligned but the spacing of her top stitching was a little bit too narrow, making it look a bit heavy, especially against the daintier fabric. I do think I would have put her above Lewis in the ranking though because not only were his pockets misaligned but these shorts also make it look like your bum leans to the left

he wasn’t the only one that was just partially cheeked up on a thursday afternoon as Emma’s elastic was uneven, causing the same issue

but from the front, they were incredibly neat, landing her just short of a podium finish

I was very pleased to see that most of the sewers opted for some sort of a print – Sam and Lewis are on THIN ICE if they don’t take a leaf out of Tim’s book and go bananas in the haberdashery

or at least open an alpaca sanctuary

between this, Anna’s narrowboat and what I am choosing to believe is Minnie’s incredibly pornographic sewing room portraiture that cannot be shown before 9pm

we’re off to a strong start with the introductory VTs. A disappointing lack of pets and niche sports like extreme frisbee or pickled egg skittles though. There’s still time, I believe in Emma’s potential to be a box of frogs waiting to go mad.

Back to the print discussion, and we can tick off a bingo square because it really didn’t take long for this one bolt of wax print inspired fabric to rear its head again

at this point I think it’s been a cap, a bag and now Dawn’s worst enemy

they said “top stitching” and Dawn apparently heard “self snitching”

she was so starstruck I think she would’ve confessed her darkest secrets if Esme had only asked during her little detour during the fabric scramble

truly the definition of being there for a good time, not a long time and oh boy, does she shine in the next challenge.

And lastly we have Angie’s shorts and you’ll just have to trust me that they’re in this screenshot

they’re very Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane

it’s The Emperor’s New Summer.

An Official Summer Shorts Ranking:
1. Anna’s Statement Pockets
2. Beth’s Jedi Beach Day
3. Rebecca’s Got Crabs
4. Emma’s Right Cheek, Blue
5. Lewis’s Left Cheek, Green
6. Minnie’s Strawberry Shortpants
7. Tim’s Banana Pants
8. Angie’s Invisi-shorts
9. Dawn’s Contrast Top Snitching
10. Heather’s Pocketful of Lobsters
11. Leopard Print is a Drag Queen’s Ecru
12. Sam’s Agender Shorts

Nothing To Bag About

For their introduction to the insanity of the Transformation Challenge the sewers were having to deconstruct a pair of novelty barbecue aprons, as modelled here by Esme and Patrick

and make them into a bag. But it couldn’t be just any old bag, it had to have a specific purpose. Until it didn’t and they sort of just shrugged and said “Yeah, that’s a rucksack” when Rebecca presented them with just a rucksack

it’s cute! But poor Dawn was tying herself in knots trying to make sure that Esme and Patrick might know that these 10 rashers of smoked back bacon wearing a dinner jacket is meant to be a sewing bag

my Mount Rushmore of Sewing Bee moments are The Skanklets, Esme vs Sushi, Marcus’s Muscular Sausage Casing and now Dawn’s Accidental Bacon – specifically the moment it fully sinks in that she’s dressing prosciutto up like it’s the 5 year old ring bearer at someone’s wedding and Sophie is doing NOTHING to make her feel better about the involuntary pork situation

the bag is incomprehensible and its only real function is a conversation starter as people are forced to ask you “Why is your bacon wearing a tuxedo?” because little did Dawn know, you could just haphazardly write the function of the bag on the bag and that’s enough sometimes

gee, I wonder who could possibly have made the music bag…

or in the case of Minnie, just shove a load of stuff in there and hope Esme and Patrick could work out a plan for themselves

my favourite instance of “does what it says on the bag” was Adele who just let the apron decide what the bag did and was not going to stop and ask herself “is a beer bag a thing?”

it’s a fifth place beer bag, now! Having just been beaten by Angie’s Baggiest Bag That Ever Bagged and which had to have a definite purpose prescribed to it because it was so well made

handbag wasn’t specific enough, apparently

I think that might literally be the definition of “handbag” Patrick.

While most of the sewers worked furiously to work out the varying occupations applicable to a bag for life, Tim was tackling the philosophical conundrum of whether a Kangaroo can count as a bag or not

it’s not just an apron with a slightly bigger pocket, it’s a fruit-picking bag

close enough, welcome back Amber Butchart’s History Bit.

I can only image that Lewis looked at Tim’s effort to turn 2 aprons into 1 uglier apron and Dawn dressing pancetta up as Peewee Herman and thought “Well, at least I’ve beaten them” only to land right between them in the bottom three for what is ultimately kind of just a normal bag

god forbid a man reminisce about when it used to rain

you do obviously get quite heavily penalised in a Transformation Challenge for being too normal, which is why the winner’s sash for Miss Fuel and Hydrate comes second

Beth continues to play second fiddle to Anna, who won with a bafflingly well made hatbox

you only need to take one look at Anna to know that she’s going to rule the Transformation Challenge with an iron fist and I for one welcome our new Folk Grunge Overlord

I’m so excited for when they don’t confine her to a mere bag and give her free reign to engineer counterfeit Labubus into 18th century undergarments.

Joining Anan and Beth in the top 3 and redeeming her bottom 3 placement in the Pattern Challenge was Heather with her gym bag

unfortunately Sam wasn’t able to have quite the same redemption arc because he quite literally just sort of folded an apron over, sewed it shut and called it a tool bag

Patrick and Esme had an issue with the fact it didn’t have a means to close it which I don’t know is strictly Sam’s fault given that access to the haberdashery was strictly outlawed. Damien cost them £900 in beaded turquoise trim and they decided that you had to survive at least 3 weeks before you could be trusted with the rickrack and bugle beads.

An Official Very Specific Bag Ranking:
1. Anna’s Hat Box of Tricks
2. Beth’s Bandolier of Baggers
3. Heather’s Gym Baggy
4. Definitely A Gardening Bag
5. Adele’s Predetermined Beer Bag
6. Rebecca’s Bag for Carabiners
7. I Am The Music Bag, I Come From Down The Way
8. Minnie’s 1 Bag Full of Wool
9. Sam’s Folded Apron
10. Dawn’s Dapper Bacon
11. Just A Normal Bag, An Innocent Bag
12. Tim’s Biblically Accurate Apron

Summertime Madness

For the Made to Measure Challenge they were doing something a little bit different as the sewers found themselves having to design an outfit for their perfect summer’s day. The ~twist~ being that there were no models and they would have to be designing it for themselves. Which I do think is quite a big ask for people who have never been on TV and probably never experienced a critique like this. The show did it really well though, Patrick and Esme were great at making sure the critiques didn’t come across as a personal criticism of the sewers’ styles and bodies. Project Runway has done a challenge like this a fair few times and it is ALWAYS uncomfortable – granted nobody here made anything as hideous as Angela’s rosetted travel pants

Michael Kors looking her dead in the eyes and telling her “You look like a mess just standing!”, forcing her to fly to France looking like the M&S statement necklace display exploded and having the most French woman to ever live in France say she hated the outfit and immediately send her back to the USA is some of the funniest reality TV ever committed to film. A magnitude 10 humiliation ritual

I think we hit all the cornerstones of summer here – strawberry picking, romantic picnics, swimming and the desire to join a band of trawlermen out at sea where nothing can bother you but the lobsters and the occasional drifting albatross

I’m very confused about what weather Lewis was dressing for but at the time he didn’t know that he should probably be preparing for a nuclear summer. There were some fit issues, it was a bit too short in the front and the pockets were definitely not fitting a beer in them

but hey, a least we have a bag for that!

speaking of bags – Dawn completely lost her mind and decided that what her minor wedding guest day dress and sensible cardigan needed was a matching poo bag on the hip

the judges do not address the poo bag AT ALL which left me with a million and one questions. Primarily: she does mean a bag for poo bags, right? And in the event that she is bagging the poo and pocketing the bagged poo into her poo holster: is it detachable? Or is it always just there and forcing people to ponder if that’s dog poo in your external pocket or are you just happy to see them? I’m terrible at forgetting things in my pocket, this seems destined to become a laundry day biohazard – always remember to separate your darks and shites.

The biggest issue for the judges was that Dawn’s dress was just a little bit too simple and Dawn seemed to realise how this was going to end about halfway through her critique when her eyes started imploring senpai to notice the designer saddlebag

and just unfortunately for Dawn everyone actually did reasonably well so ultimately it was going to largely be judged on how much everyone had pushed themselves technically which was Sam’s saving grace as he churned out a really quite good polo shirt and chino set

he looks great in them! There’s a slight tuck in the back of the shirt but the trousers fit him really, really well and choosing the ~ecru~ buttons to match the trousers do show a good eye for details that his previous two makes maybe haven’t.

My personal favourite outfit in this challenge was Heather’s – this fabric was gorgeous and I loved that she took the time to really position the bird detail, it’s very mid-2010s Dolce and Gabbana

if I were a summer person and if my HRT would start carrying its weight and give me the cleavage I deserve, I’d wear this in a heartbeat. But at present I think my ideal summer outfit is a sheet-ghost costume – please let me sweat anonymously. I also wish I had half the personality needed to pull off something like Anna’s new romantic Edwardian street urchin who stowed away on a pirate ship

nothing in this world brings me more joy than seeing someone that has a style that is so perfect for them – Anna just carries this look so well and I’m glad that Esme talked her out of the bunched bloomer hem because it might have taken it too a place of being too costume-y. It was just a shame that there was a slight misalignment with the zip

allowing Emma to sneak in a win at the last second with a very well fitted swimsuit

given the hell of the last time they did swimsuits on this show and the concept being banished to the underworld, she thoroughly deserved it too, it was very well made and her cover-up had a bow that Esme couldn’t resist

yeah, but can it hold 1 cocker spaniel’s worth of poo?

There were a few Just A Dress™ dresses that you can’t really be too mad at and very much got swept aside with but one comment from Patrick and Esme – Adele’s strawberry dress was very cute

and Angie looked lovely in her own dress which had a fun flounce along the bottom

both offerings they could easily wear quite often and ultimately that was the goal of the challenge. It’s a kinder way of easing everyone into the competition as it’s more familiar territory and stops them from almost crashing out by making a simple dress and throwing a random adornment on the hip for flare (well, it’s meant to prevent that from happening…)

I think about Dan’s prolapsing Quality Street more often than is probably good for my sanity. WHERE WAS THE NON-ELIMINATION EPISODE FOR DAWN’S SUMMERTIME POO SCABBARD?

Tim was the only other name they were rolling around for elimination due to the fact his waistcoat was so lumpy and thick it looked like he could wear it as tactical gear in a warzone

but I did actually really enjoy his outfit because he does look like he’s dressed as a crew member from One Piece

it was a good episode for niche and whimsical pirate dressing – 2026 is the Summer of Piracy, cutlasses and tricorns at the ready, babes! This year’s biggest accessories are eye-patches and fowl-mouthed parrots. But also, cottagecore lesbian will never go out of style

she’s going to make *so much* artisanal jam in this thing.

The last of the dresses was from Minnie who had a gorgeous floral fabric that had these interesting lace inserts

and the final dress was very pretty but she had maybe been a bit glamoured by the fabric as some aspects of the dress – namely the gathering – weren’t best suited to the rigidity of the lace parts. But she looked wonderful and I hope she enjoys her childless strolls around a National Trust garden

you’re speaking my language, babe.

And finally we have Beth and her Glastonbury outfit that she looks sensational in

I kind of wish the pockets weren’t black but the way those pants fall and move is so beautiful.

An Unofficial Perfect Summer Outfit Ranking:
1. I’m A Sucker For Parrots, Sue Me
2. Emma Goes Poolside
3. Little Urchin Annie
4. The Fabled Cottagecore Lesbian
5. The Unofficial Strawberry Dress
6. Beth’s Glasto Cargos
7. Keep Your Chinos Up
8. Minnie’s No Kids Allowed Dress
9. Fit and Flounce
10. Tim’s Tactical Butterfly Waistcoat
11. Lewis’s Life at Sea
12. Dawn Goes Poo Side

Anna was so close to a hattrick – and she would’ve gotten away with it too had it not been for that meddling invisible zipper! But ultimately it was Emma taking it for managing to perfectly fit a swimsuit

as for the elimination, it was down to either Tim or Dawn. I was hoping they’d follow on from last year and make the first episode a non-elimination, which should be standard practice in these competitions. I thought Dawn deserved another shot before being eliminated

I thoroughly enjoyed her short time on the show and hope she loved it a much as it came across. She will always be a Sewing Bee icon to me.

and so, 11 go on to Colour and Print Week which I believe I have manifested into existence, so I apologise to Sam and his love of neutral linen