He is my son.

Hi, it’s me Your Friendly Neighbourhood Cat Girl, clocking in for duty!

Tutu Much

It’s Kid’s Week and for the brief moment of the Pattern Challenge we start on relative normality. It’s also not very brief because the explanation for the Tutu pattern the sewers were following goes on and on like its very own Odyssey! Just as you think it’s going to end, there’s another new baffling piece of sewing terminology and I STILL don’t understand how the netting situation works! I just know that for a significant portion of the challenge, it looked like everyone was having to wrestle exotic sea creatures through their sewing machines with ever increasing expressions of horror

naturally with it being ballet dancewear, everything did skew very much to the pinks and pastel colours. But not Beth, who was Not Like The Other Girls-ing

and so rather appropriately ended up with a tutu that looked like the Galaxy Print Swan No.4 in the Tumblr ballet I’m working on

I’m currently trying to find a prima ballerina who is willing to wear a Misha Collins mask for the entire production. What’s the woman from CATS (2019) doing now? My Mishapocalypse Overture can’t be any more career damning than that.

The judges definitely latched onto the more ~unique~ tutus, so it was very savvy of Rebecca to not run at the barrels of pink spandex like she was the reincarnation of Redrum and instead went with this really lovely floral fabric

and the judges really, really liked it

the only thing bumping her down to third place was the fact the knickers were a little bit too baggy

so it’s back to the Sewing Bee Knicker Making Gulag for you, Rebecca

FOUR IS NOT ENOUGH KNICKERS.

Heather was the only other sewer to go for a print as she envisioned a 4 year old bringing back jazzercize in the year of our lord 2026

I do appreciate her efforts to match the elastic and netting to the same tones of blue in the fabric – it could easily have gone too busy but it’s extremely cohesive.

The other sewers were all a bit of a melange of pink and blue, of which my favourite was Minnie’s, I just really loved the tiffany blue and white

there was a little bit of an issue with her netting and the direction the seam was going – I again must reiterate, I could not understand anything about the net situation as tutus are now some sort of incomprehensible cosmic horror

to me and Adele both, apparently

going to the annual school dance recital and being asked “which one’s your daughter” and having to tell them it’s the one whose tutu looks like it was made by barrelling it through the sewing machine like a Japanese bullet train

I felt really awful for Adele, she came in SO excited for Kid’s Week and her kids have been a defining part of her character on the show

and then this first challenge was like watching her step on every rake imaginable

rule 1 of reality TV is unfortunately to never experience joy because the haberdashery gods will convene to ruin your life.

While Rebecca had veered away from her usual pinks, you were going to have to prize magenta and turquoise out of Emma’s cold dead hands

while Anna had gone for the slightly more interesting colour combination of lavender and burgundy

both had a few issues with their tutus but again, I couldn’t quite understand *what* – something was upside down? I fear I made direct eye contact with Beth’s Monkey-to-come and lost all of my comprehension skills.

An Official Child’s Tutu Ranking:
1. Tumblr: The Ballet
2. The Burgundy Swan
3. Read My Tu-tulips
4. Junior Jazzercize
5. Tiffany Blue-tu
6. A Magenta and Turquoise Intervention
7. Adele’s Rail Gunned Ballet

Ready, Teddy, Go!

For the Kid’s Week Transformation Challenge we were truly touching the sublime in such a way that I cannot believe they had never done a challenge involving making a menagerie of the most adorable Little Guys imaginable as the sewers found themselves having to turn a child’s fleece into a stuffed animal

the only stipulation being that Esme had to be able to recognise what it was, and she doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to basic zoology

so sadly the rarely spotted double-ended goose is out of the question

Anna’s solution to Esme’s uphill zoological struggle was an octopus because how many things can possibly have 8 limbs?

diva, she was staring at the most sushi-shaped piece of sushi and was convinced it was a carrot, it’s a toss of coin as to whether she looks at the most octopus-shaped octopus you could imagine and guesses that it’s a bird-eating tarantula

the only real problem Anna faced was making said 8 limbs in the time limit and was seriously contemplating a tragic trawler boat accident for her octopus

but she did get it all done and while she could’ve just had the legs do all the talk, the decision to use the tasselled trim was truly inspired

and she continues to have the same stranglehold on the Transformation Challenge as a Giant Pacific Octopus as her octopus with its amigurumi stare into the void rocketed to first place

there were a few expected options – a Steiff Bear drawn from memory and the vessel that harbours the soul of an angry Victorian orphan that turns up on Antiques Roadshow and is worth £2,500 that Beth created

someone call the Warrens, we’ve got a code red! The Curséd objet d’arte is loose and roaming!
I was slightly surprised that the judges immediately clocked it was a monkey

and y’know, not a Labubu hiding the fact it knows where the bodies are

especially given they fact they had no clue what Adele’s pig was

but maybe it’s because, as we all know, pigs are very stringent about the gender binary so the combination of pink and trousers really threw them off

while Adele wrestled with the porcine gender norms of her own creation, Minnie was going with a teddy bear that I don’t think she got nearly enough credit for having just whipped up off the top of her head

it is also a near perfect recreation of Wawa from The Rugrats, a memory that one look at Minnie’s bear unlocked from the depths of my subconscious

just don’t turn it around because the back of it is a little bit of a Homer Simpson Bulldog Clips situation

oh my Wawa, how…. snatched you look?

The stand out for me though, because I immediately imprinted upon it like Jacob Black on little baby Reticulated Python, was Emma’s stegosaurus who is the Little Guy to end all Little Guys

I haven’t been this sincerely delighted by a creation on Sewing Bee since Marcus created the muscular sausage casing

his little face is everything to me

I will tear down kingdoms for him, he is my son now.
Also going prehistoric was Rebecca, although maybe unintentionally, with her turtle looking like it might be more comfortable within the primordial soup of the this world’s beginning than the Mediterranean of now

again, I was surprised that Esme was able to get what it was so quickly because when it was splayed out and unstuffed on Rebecca’s sewing table, it did look like someone had de-pelted Patrick (Starfish, not Grant)

ultimately the judges didn’t really vibe with distressingly flat Nudar from Futurama

they felt that the scrap pieces she’d used to make the shell should’ve been more uniform and neatly arranged. I personally actually quite liked it but they threw her down in last place, being narrowly beaten by Heather’s elephant that has never had a thought in its entire life

I look forward to Sophie Willan’s children’s literature debut: Horton’s Hearing Voices

although the last thing we need in this world is another comedian with a kid’s lit deal. How long do we think it’ll be before celebrities realise how lucrative the fairy smut sector of the literary world can be? Where is all the faded popstar of yesteryear ghost-written yaoi?

An Official Fleece Stuffed Animal Ranking:
1. Ten out Tentacles, No Notes
2. MY SON!
3. Desperately Trying To Appease The Cursed Monkey
4. The Porcine Gender Spectrum
5. Snatched Your Wawa
6. Horton’s Last Brain Cell
7. Taxidermy Patrick Star

I Need A Hero!

For their Made to Measure Challenge the sewers were unleashing their creativity by having to make up their very own original superhero and design a costume for a child. Which is why Amber Butchart had to give us a History Bit on scandalous shin-baring tutus

The Sewing Bee simply does not have Marvel and DC image licensing money, so we had to showcase the only 7 superheroes apparently not rocking up in Avengers: I Hope You’ve Done Your Homework

the temptation to do all of this revision just so I can be the Emily Wilson of Avengers Doomsday is incredibly tempting.

The judges had called for completely original names and powers – although it was more about the name because with the The X-men having plumbed the depths of powers like Just Being Incredibly Ugly

I fear there is no such thing as a completely unique superpower. OR SO I THOUGHT and then Emma covered a child in an abundance of teleportation orifices which they could unzip to teleport to cool locations like a rainforest

the dark and terrifying void of space

or the corner-shop for a Twix

honestly the most useful power of the entire episode – the amount of time this would save! Help me, Zip Kid! I need a packet of Wotsits and a Sprite!

there were some issues with proportions and fit – the logo was a little bit too large for Patrick but I think he forgot that the child has to fit through the hole. It’s actually better if you don’t think about the mechanics of Zip Kid too much, just trust them, it’s fine!
Zip Kid wasn’t the only one with teleportation powers as Anna was creating Rocket Boy who has the ability to fly so fast he can tear through time and space

if you haven’t watched the episode, you can have 1 guess as to which moment in time Anna wants to go to

I am confident you nailed it in one. And also I can’t criticise her because at university I submitted two projects that were set within Versailles and my tutor sent me an AO3 Marie Antoinette fanfic to read as research. I lay down in a dark room for three days and threatened to never come out ever again. I’ve never felt shame like it again. It was also a really good fanfic and I can’t find it anymore! I got a first for the screenplay too! Unfortunately Anna wasn’t getting a first for Rocket Boy who does look a little bit like the Tinman being burnt for witchcraft

the idea of the flame pants is really cool and the effect she achieved is great! There’s just a few proportion issues with the rest of the outfit – the belt is too big and if you told me that Hilary Duff wore this exact outfit to the premier of Spy Kids 2, I would honestly not question you

2000s Disney Star fashion was the best.

Recent superhero trends had had a little bit of an influence, most notably with Beth with the streetwear aesthetic giving her superhero, Electra a very K-Pop Demon Hunters vibe

she was apparently being very conscious of the tropes and pitfalls that manufacturing superhero outfits for girls fall into. She did a really great post on her Instagram explaining it all and I think she did a great job of actualising all of her points here. The back of the gilet was particularly good

and I really, REALLY thought she had this week in the bag and then along came The Treblemaker whose unsolicited flash mobbing absolutely makes her a villain

theatre kid villainy aside, the outfit is really cute and as far as playing with the theme of the superhero, however ineffective they are in a life or death situation, I think she had the most fun. Except for maybe Heather who just threw 5 animals in a blender and hoped for the best when it came to her incomprehensible chimera

he looks like one of those medieval attempts to draw animals from memory, hearsay and rumours

look, it’s REALLY hard to draw a seal if it won’t sit still!

Heather wasn’t the only going for an animal theme, as Minnie opted for The Friendly Neighbourhood Cat Girl, which is also my name!

she was going for a Magical Girl, a genre of superhero that’s very prevalent in East Asia and which I am very partial to, so immediately clocked that it’s basically a recreation of Sakura’s rubber outfit

I’m pretty sure Esme and Patrick didn’t but maybe it had come up and that’s why they were a little cold on it

it is very good though? The movement of the skirt was absolute magic and really captured the essence of the transformation scenes that are core to the genre. I do think it could’ve done with being slightly more elaborate – all it possibly needed was a bit of lace trim to make it a little flouncier. The kicker for the judges though was that her cat-shaped cut-out wasn’t reading clearly enough as a cat

but also… the character looks enough like a cat that maybe it didn’t fully need that? I really thought Patrick would be more delighted by the cat ears because he was VERY put out by Heather having to tell her 18th century taxidermy hoax that he could no longer transform into a bat

so now The Chimera of Chaos cannot go out in the dark.

Lastly we have Adele who really needed a success in this challenge to pull her out of this Kid’s Week nosedive and luckily for her Bee Girl was here to save the day

this is really cute and very Ladybug and Cat Noir. I do love how absurdly big the mask is, it’s giving very mid-2010s shutter shades.

An Unofficial Superhero Costume Ranking:
1. Justice For The Gilet
2. Adele’s Sting Operation
3. Theatre Kid Villainy
4. Legally Distinct Cardcaptor Sakura
5. 2000s Hilary Duff: In SPAAAAACE!
6. Zip It!
7. The Batless Man

On a complately biased front, I genuinely loved Minnie’s superhero the most and it was the outfit I most wanted to go and fight crime in. Or at least spin and aim nebulous magical powers in the vague direction of an equally elaborately niche villain. However, the judges really, REALLY loved Rebecca’s Treblemaker (and it is a great pun)

I did also think it might have gone to Beth before Rebecca but alas, it is Beth’s destiny to have to stand at the back while her eyes twitch.

As the Number One Minnie Defender on the internet, this week’s elimination is most certainly not part of my French vanilla fantasy and I think Heather had a VERY lucky escape all things considered

I really loved Minnie’s design sensibility, there was just something about it that I personally really clicked with where I think maybe the judges didn’t with so I am sad to see her go

Next week, Emma rules Music Week!