Find someone that looks at you the way Lewis looks at cow print.

Today I feel like an upside down invisible zip.

Give ’em Shell

This week it’s Pattern and Colour Week – but not only was this a week about coaxing Lewis out of his comfort zone of sensible Jacamo neutrals as he continues to sort of have the vibe that Sewing Bee is just a thing that is happening at him – like when you walk into the supermarket and forget what you came in for and suddenly you’ve got a pizza meal deal and an inevitably disappointing danish only to get home and remember BATTERIES! It was batteries! (it’s always batteries)

so as well as everyone being cattle prodded to use up the bolts of fabric the show apparently got from Hobbycraft’s Amalfi Coast collection

it was an Adaptive Pattern Challenge with this week’s garment being for a Shell Top that had been designed for people with disabilities – invisible side zips for access to medical equipment, a wide neck and high-low hem which is more comfortable for anyone who uses a wheelchair

I really liked that they rolled the adaptive fashion into Colour and Pattern Week because it lets it be known that fashion for disabilities can still be fun and vibrant. Disabled Fashion has a bit of the same problem as gender neutral clothing in that there seems to a perception that nonbinary or agender people want to dress like the saddest monk in the friary while every enby I’ve ever met is either both of your grandparents at the same time or the human equivalent of those racks of snakes you get in zoo gift shops

however you can lead a horse to the colourful water, but you can’t stop it from looking lovingly at a bolt of sensible neutrals

a key part of this challenge was the pattern matching across the pocket and side seams which something as organic as cow print is maybe not the best choice for and to be honest, I’m genuinely impressed that he ended up actually finding the repeating point

the pocket may have been well matched up but it was a little bit small, which seems to be a recurring issue for Lewis

maybe he just has really small hands, guys?

He wasn’t the only one to slightly mix up the measurements as Adele flew slightly too close to the invisible zip sun and her wings of wax and feathers promptly melted

just remember that Rebecca said she loves working with Lace and Satin so if you’re emotionally attached to her, please know there is a 70% chance she’s a goner in the ever flammable 80s Week

but we’ll cross that bridge of prom dresses and Madonna cosplay when we come to it, for now it was Adele’s place in the competition’s turn to be threatened by the hubris of a completely functionless zip

I don’t know, I think more clothing should come inserted with glorified fidget toys – that’s adaptive! It still wasn’t enough to land her in last place – it was close, she was in 10th and Sam was 11th for his vibes-based approach to the challenge

the completely unprompted contrast binding wasn’t asked for but I’m kind of obsessed with how much it really makes this look like something Mrs. Overall would come shambling through the doors of Acorn Antiques wearing

I did really like his sort of Arts and Crafts Wiliam Morris print though

so if the cleaning staff of Kelmscott Manor are looking for a new uniform, Sam might your man! Just maybe don’t ask him to do the zips because it might end up looking a bit like they were inserted by a slightly annoyed badger

and he wasn’t the only one that went with a slightly statement trim as Beth opted for a contrast thread to relive the highs and lows of the Sewing Bee contrast topstitching challenge last week

Patrick was really not a fan of the detail and I imagine he just wanted it to be a ~gentille ecru~

personally, I think it looks incredibly inoffensive against the busyness of the print that Beth had chosen

it’s very statement wall mural in an pseudo Italian restaurant (it’s a pizza joint with lasagne as a DEI hire) circa 2005 and it’s probably called Luigi’s but is owned and run by a man called Dave. Which is all to say I really like and think it might be the most contemporary looking one amongst the cacophony of florals and Lewis mooing in the corner. Oh, and Rebecca once against bringing seafood to the Pattern Challenge (if I had a nickel etc etc etc)

the sardines are indeed cute! She very deservedly won for it too and it meant quite a bit too her as she has chronic stomach pain and factors that into the clothes she makes herself. We were so close to having the top 3 being a perfect Italian restaurant with Beth’s fauxtalian backsplash (my new drag name), Rebecca’s penchant for novelty seafood fabric and Anna gravitating to pasta like the average family of 4 on a Wednesday evening

but sadly she backed off because she’d be fucked if she was going to work out where the rigatoni starts repeating so she went for this daisy print instead

which was not a great deal easier but she managed it in the end – potentially to the slight detriment of the bottom hem which was a touch lumpy

but, y’know… at least she had a hem, Emma was a victim of time management and had, maybe understandably, dedicated a lot of time to the pattern matching in Colour and Print Week, leaving her top unhemmed

struggles with time are completely understandable, especially this early in the competition where you’re not used to having to sew while Esme patrols the room with a sniper rifle tucked under her arm

Heather at some point must have just decided to cut her losses and not attempt to pattern match the side seams at all in favour of having a complete garment

but she was in good(?) company with Angie who’d had to make the same decision and neither of them had hemmed either – there needs to be a lot more hemming and much less hawing going on, lads!

or at least I assuming it was a deliberate decision like Lewis and his tiny pockets or the editors treating Sam to this horror movie zoom out (1400) to really drive the point home that he’s going to be eliminated

the most wholesome television show on the planet having the cinematography of Jaws <3

Lastly we have Minnie who at all points in the challenge looked as though this shell top could become her 13th reason

I looked like this the entire way through my GCSE maths exams and I got a D… you cannot make me care about the functionality of the hypotenuse in calculating train times from Darlington. I also got a C for English because, and this might not surprise anyone reading this AT ALL, apparently I was too sarcastic about Petronella Wyatt. Nothing about her Wikipedia page suggests anything I said was unearned.
Minnie’s consternation was much more fruitful, just missing out on a podium position

her fabric was definitely my favourite – the quickest way to my heart is a cute bird

I have been lured into 3 different card game now because my best friend has realised he can just bait me with birds – we’ve done Vanguard, Yu-gi-oh, Hearthstone and now I’m having a whirlwind tour of Runeterra

the Bad Albatross Meme Deck in Hearthstone is the best thing I’ve ever witnessed.

An Official Pattern Matched Adaptive Shell Top Ranking:
1. She Sells Sardine Shell Tops By The Sea Shore
2. Anna Robbing Me Of A Rigged-toni Pun
3. Welcome To The Stage, Miss Fauxtalian Backsplash!
4. Minnie’s Own Personal (s)Hell Top
5. Tim’s Unhemmed Shell Top (Mildly Positive)
6. A Cow Betwixt Two Unhemmed Roses
7. Emma’s Unhemmed Shell Top (Mildly Negative)
8. Heather’s Vibes Based Pattern Matching
9. Hems < Pattern Matching, APPARENTLY
10. Icarus’s Waxen Zips
11. Mrs. All Over The Place

Brurple

The Transformation Challenge was where the colour side of things was coming in and the joke writing team ran into the problem of making it sound like Patrick has personal beef with the critically acclaimed movie, The Colour Purple – he just thinks it insists upon itself

as the sewers found themselves having to make outfits that paired Patrick and Esme’s least favourite colours together: Patrick hating purple (and not the filmography of Whoopi Goldberg) and Esme having randomly decided to hate brown like 7 series deep into this show and deciding that was her thing now – it couldn’t just be bows anymore, could it? I mean, she still loves a bow which is what Minnie was banking on as a peace offering to the haberdashery’s greatest warmonger

and it was deemed satisfactorily bow-like

I think they were more impressed by the design work put in to have the fabrics contrasting multiple times on either side because it does look a little bit like the swollen lungs put on the back of packs of cigarettes as a smoking deterrent WHICH I SHALL NOT ILLUSTRATE HERE so instead here’s Minnie once again looking like the last panel in a Garfield comic where the punchline is “Monday.”

the key to the design challenge is, as ever, to mostly take your given materials and furiously pin them into a shape that a clearly emotional drag queen could scream “IT’S VIVIENNE WESTWOOD…. INSPIRED!” at you

hence Emma’s win

genuine congratulations on making something that looked like actual real people clothes! This is essentially the Debenham’s trickle down equivalent of Anna’s suit pretzel that looks an armour piece for a League of Legends character

I was surprised that this didn’t place slightly higher -I think it might be that it was only one item of clothing? I *think* the purple is just the suit lining and the suit doesn’t 100% read as brown all the time. Instead it was Rebecca and Tim joining Emma in the top 3 – Rebecca taking third for some interesting pseudo-corsetry

and Tim for this outfit that looks like something from the method dressing press tour if Zendaya had played Willy Wonka in Wonka instead of Timothee Chalamet

I was very worried when he was describing it as “little fabrics” during the concept phase

but then became imminently less worried for him when they later cut to Lewis explaining that he was also doing dangly strips of fabric while standing next to an Eldritch horror slowly falling out the bottom of a boob tube

every year there’s one contestant who immediately become extremely special to the blog and this year it is very much Lewis, as cemented by the top that looks like you’re smuggling an octopus out of the aquarium

Esme and Patrick did not appreciate it as much, putting it firmly in the bottom but sparing it from the bottom 2 because if there’s one crime worse than having a passing knowledge of women’s fashion that amounts to “I know a woman, I speak to her sometimes!” it’s making something boring – case in point: Sam’s That’s Just A Skirt™

and Angie’s That’s An Only Moderately More Interesting Skirt™

so consider this a warning shot – they want maximalist gubbins and nonsense like Beth’s Corporate Madonna with the Big Boobies

I really liked this! Or at least I liked the initial impact of it, and I do still like what’s happening with the skirt and most of the top

but if you look too long at the sleeves it does begin to feel like you’re spiralling into madness which is as quintessential to the Sewing Bee Transformation Challenge as grabbing a fistful of prolapsing fabric and championing it to the win as a shoulder corsage

Rebecca had tried her best with the rosette at the front of her dress that looks like we’re about to crown Miss Quality Street 2026 – a very prestigious title, one day the coconut blue one will triumph over the Big Purple One

the show made such a thing about brown and purple apparently being a super weird colour combination but I think we should put a little more respect on this duo’s name!

granted, it does depend A LOT on the tone of brown which is why everyone made beelines (heh) for the darker shades of brown, leaving Heather with this paler fabric that I don’t think goes with purple as well

unless this was a purposeful decision like Lewis and his tiny pockets or Lewis and his illegal octopus smuggling programme. But her dress was good and in the words of Michael Kors “slutty, slutty, slutty”

find someone that appreciates you as much as Esme likes a button-up bottom fly! And then finally we have Adele who has sort of just made the spaghetti strapped equivalent of the Diva, That’s Just A Skirt™ special

There has to be more of a concept, Lewis’s is a baffling take on what clothes should be doing to your body but at least you can look at it and think “Yeah, this is perfect for that Ocean’s Eleven heist I’ve planned to rescue the Giant Pacific Octopus from captivity!”

now all I need is a zoologist, access to a Victoria Plumbing showroom and a cameo from Rihanna speaking techy gobbledygook that we have to pretend to understand.

A Brown and Purple Transformation Challenge Ranking:
1. IT WAS VIVIENNE WESTWOOD…. INSPIRED!
2. And Zendaya is Wonka
3. Miss Quality Street 2026
4. Anna’s Big Business Sivir Skin
5. The Hip Holes Don’t Lie
6. Minnie’s Velvet Smoking Deterrent
7. The Corporate Madonna With The Big Boobies
8. A Nice Octopus-free Top
9. Is That An Octopus In Your Top Our Are You Just Happy To See Me?
10. Slightly More Of A Literally Just A Skirt
11. Literally Just A Skirt

Colour Me Surprised

For their Made to Measure challenge the sewers were having to make monochromatic outfits – hopefully using different textures and pattern to crate visual interest. Some did that more than others. I’m not sure how much Lewis’s is a monochromatic dress so much as it is just a dress that is green

I wore a dress that was a very similar style and effect to my little brother’s wedding last year and I wouldn’t personally describe it as a monochrome blue dress – it’s just a blue dress? But as much as I adore being petty about the meanings of things, I mostly just want to show you my cute outfit

and Lewis’s dress was cute and very wearable! I was just expecting more things along the lines of the colour blocking that Adele had used in her side of the War of the Crisscross Tops (which I believe is also what you call friday night on Grindr)

he had just watched her sew a zip in upside down so how hard a battle could this possibly be?

this was such a serve and immaculately well sewn, that line down the middle and the cut of those culottes could not have been crisper!

Also in the green camp were Emma and Sam – there was not a great variety of colour, they really RGB’d it (not Ruth Bader Ginsberg.) Sam had opted for a kaftan and you knew exactly how this was going down because at every available moment the show would remind you just how simple it is

and they literally just catapulted Dawn out the room for her demi-kaftan so really he did this to himself – granted the sewing of this J-lo Versace dress for your 85 year old grandmother on her Saga Cruise is actually *really* good

I get what he’s going for with the duller fabric that reveals the bright floral but it’s just clashing a little bit too much and looks a bit like something the supporting cast on Lost started wearing in Season 4 to show they’ve been stranded on that island long enough to start having to piece weird outfits together from Hurley’s excess of Hawaiian shirts and suitcase canvas. He *might* have squeaked by had he gone for a more vibrant green like Emma had used for her Leprechaun that’s slinging back dirts margs in the Canary Islands

there’s just something about a green waistcoat that does make you look a little bit like you should be protecting a pot of gold. Or noting my 175,000 watermelons

friends fear she’s playing Runescape instead of taking her medication, again. I personally think hoarding a wealth of digital watermelons until I have more than the annual output of China is a perfectly acceptable and human goal to have, I scream as the men with a net chase me down the street…

Sam’s biggest chance of a reprieve from being the Obligatory Early Boot Man was that Angie had also been just as boring as him in the Transformation Challenge and her Made to Measure looked just a little bit clunky

I’m not 100% sold on the capelet, I think it’s maybe 1 detail too many with the print, the bow and the exposed midriff – it’s spaghetti junction all over the torso. But I do like the sort of traditional Caribbean influence that’s going on with the print and volume of the top and cut of the skirt. It’s a fun outfit that just needs a bit of an edit.

Minnie, Anna, Tim and Beth had all opted for blue too with Tim being the only sewer to go for men’s wear, the result being a mixed bag for the judges

I actually really like this, I think it looks like very smart pyjamas – something about it comes across like Japanese jinbei. Patrick thought the arrangement of the different batik fabrics – which there were four of

made the model’s torse look too long

well Patrick, some of us like our men like we like our Christopher Nolan movies: long and featuring Zendaya for 90 seconds. Don’t knock my door down all at once, boys.

Minnie also ran into a few issues with her dress being a touch too tight on her model

the judges were also making a big deal about this dress being simple – Patrick referring to it as just three long tubes (aren’t we all just three long tubes?)

but I think the way she’d blocked the pattern maybe deserved a little more acknowledgement than they were seemingly willing to give. Granted, I do think the decision to have the seams looking like this was the wrong choice

it would make me feel constantly insecure that I was wearing my dress inside out and something this bodycon and sexy really relies on lying absolutely flat against the body which both the seams and tightness weren’t letting happen. So I guess it’s Plan B: dress as the sexy Romanian circus that shows up in the park every year for date night

I’m obsessed with this and the boldest use of a blue embellishment since Damian whirled through the hallowed halls of this refurbished mill to create what is now maybe not even in the top 10 weirdest things anyone has made on Sewing Bee

This is Lewis’s Ghost of Sewing Bee Future.
As for Anna’s, I do think she either needed a bigger tassel on the trim or to go really ham and use more of it and maybe not have it around the neck because it’s really fighting for attention with the shape of the neckline and her model’s absolutely lethal face card, a fight NOBODY is winning here

I would’ve also loved the stripes to have been smaller, but by the look and sound of it she made the fabric herself! And she wasn’t the only one because Beth had this mosaic patchwork going on in her dress inspired by her gran’s holiday dress

and the final effect was lovely – very in the same vein as Raph’s iconic whale denim patchwork dress

it’s almost a shame we didn’t get a better look at her making it and the work she’d put in because there’s so many contestants and they’re still doing introduction segments. Which does mean we have an important Pet Wars Update: Dusty, the most beautiful cat that ever lived

LET HIM WALK THE CATWALK IN 16 GODETS AND A DREAM

Dusty belonged to Minnie and the sort of biblically accurate wafer ham going to the lindy hop night at the dance hall belonged to Rebecca. Esme was practically drooling over the godets upon godets going on

I think the collective noun is A Swish of Godets? But the only thing holding Rebecca back was there being a slight fit issue on her model. However I wouldn’t be surprised if Rebecca fudged it a little bit on purpose because she wanted to make it fit herself instead because she would look incredible in this – an executive hobbit wants to TWIRL! sometimes!
Heather also went for pink as she decided to make us all take a break from the pronunciation of scone debate to endlessly argue over whether her trousers are red or pink

and before you know it 10 minutes of your D&D session last night was spent googling the colour spectrum frogs see in to tell whether or not the bullywugs would be able to tell that the bard had got their hair dyed. D&D can be educational – I taught my players all about cloacas as well as frog vision!
Much like Rebecca I have a feeling that Heather may have made these for herself – Esme wanted more of the shocking pink in the top or paler pink in the trousers but having them as two separate shades does make them more workable as separates in your wardrobe.

I really like most of the outfits in this Made to Measure and I have to agree that there was just something about Adele’s that was *really* good – I could’ve seen it going to Beth too but the culottes were slightly more unexpected and ~fashion~

and the elimination was staying with the greens as Sam unfortunately also becomes a goner for going too simple

the show has accidentally set a slightly concerning precedent for this so I hope they’re ready for everyone to go home, panic and return with their entire central heating system in tow as they vow to turn it into a dress suitable for going to brunch with the girls in. I think Anna could do it too.

and so, on to the insanity of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Week!