Close enough, welcome back The Saturdays.

We’re all fighting for History Bit supremacy.

A Bra Kada-bra

Kicking off Icons Week with the barcode filed off was the pattern challenge in which the sewers all had to honour the greatest pop diva of our time: Randall Boggs from Monsters Inc.

it was of course the Madonna Cone Bra, although significantly less pointed to pass health and safety regulations – but Patrick was going to make up for that

as the Lingerie Weeks of days gone by have taught us, bra making is amongst one of the most arduous tasks Sewing Bee can throw at you – maybe just behind that time they had to make shoes(????) and that one foray into gloves for shits and giggles

given all that, the end results were actually all quite good! The only one with any major visual faults was Adele’s whose did look a bit like you’d been punched in the left tit while The Vixen performed gravity defying moves

I think part of the problem was that she’d fallen out of love with the challenge almost immediately as everyone snatched the premium shades of satin and mesh, leaving behind only the distinctly Interior Design Masters statement throw pillow for a hotel lounge shade of not-quite-teal

which didn’t really match any of the meshes or ribbons on offer. It was a particularly brutal Fabric Dash this week and Anna continues to be the apex predator! Much like when Lewis was deprived of his precious, precious beige in Mexico Week, she got those black trimmings and sank her teeth into it them with the bite force of a saltwater crocodile

and Sophie wasn’t there to break them up with a spritz bottle of cold water because she was too busy keeping Adele’s spirits up

I do ultimately think Anna doing a death roll that the black ribbons had no hopes of surviving ultimately did Beth a bit of a favour, the burgundy and black combination she ended up with is much more interesting and appealing than if it had just been solidly black

her sewing of the actual cones was very good but she did have a little too much tension in the front panels which was causing the zip to look a little wonky – a problem that many of the sewers had, including Anna who had a sort of Black Widow spider corset going on

it’s very visually arresting, which you want from this sort of a design. I do think the judges maybe judged Anna’s a little more harshly than some of the others purely on account of the fact she did talk about having made corsets

and she uses “Atelier” in her Instagram handle – diva, you boned a rod for you own back! But don’t worry, it’s Lowballing Anna Week next week

I am looking forward to Literary Icons Week with mild trepidation – from the preview it seems like Sherlock Holmes, St. Trinian’s and Jane Austen: The Concept? With thankfully no evidence of The Looming Shadow of a Certain Wizard Franchise in sight.

While most of the sewers were going with solid coloured fabrics, Heather grabbed that leopard print and thus began her parade of CSI Sex Workers All Called Krystal

I am truly obsessed with this neighbourhood tart with a heart of gold – Heather was on one this week and I have to respect it. She did ultimately end up winning, with Rebecca’s royal blue offering coming in second

thankfully she managed to avoid any unwanted sogginess

I hate it when the rising damp sets in.

While Rebecca was stepping outside of her tendency to pounce upon any shade of pink, that one specific shade of purple just keeps falling into Emma’s hands

sadly there were no turquoise trims on hand and she was trapped with the purple ribbon that was the only one that had any problems with fraying

but Heather came in clutch with some Fray Stop that I imagine does what it says on the tin

God, this show – why are you all so nice and lovely! The Fray Stop may have prevented the ribbon’s fraying, but it wasn’t going to help Emma’s wit’s end as Patrick jinxed the entire week for her

and ultimately she landed in 4th place on account of the circles being a little wobblier than anyone else’s

I still think she did impressively well, the thought of sewing concentric circles genuinely makes my blood go cold. But I also haven’t used a sewing machine since Home Ec lessons in year 8 when I made a pillowcase that had a watermarked PNG of a cat riding a skateboard on it. A process that took 5 weeks, 3 panic attacks and killed maybe 2 sewing machines. Safe to say, I would actually die on Sewing Bee but if they need a sacrificial First Boot, I am happy to play the part with flare and penchant for the dramatic.

An Official Madonna Cone Bra Ranking:
1. Heather’s Uncredited Background Strumpet #3
2. Rebecca’s Blue Tits
3. Beth Bra-gundy Corset
4. Emma’s Accidentally On Purpose Purple Bra
5. Anna’s Black Widow Spid-bra
6. Adele’s Cone-cave Bra

The Band’s All Here!

A theme like Music Week is always quite difficult to shoehorn into a Transformation Challenge because you can’t really make a dress out of the communal recorders that have an alarmingly short lifespan at the average junior school – did Covid kill the Baby’s First Recorder Industry? IT SHOULD’VE. So for this week’s Transformation Challenge the sewers were just going to have to make outfits for a girl group out of “bedroom materials” which included an awful lot of pleather

the presence of the amount of pleather and easy-clean fabrics goes completely unmentioned and I felt like I was going insane. There’s a brothel-y elephant in the room and NOBODY is talking about it!

As this was a Girl Group Challenge (not of the Drag Race kind, sadly we do not get to hear Adele speak-rapping about why she deserves the crown the house down boots) the sewers were once again going to be working in teams – as decided by The Honorary Tim Gunn Button Badge

and said teams ended up being Adele, Heather and Rebecca on one team with Anna, Beth and Emma on the other. I’m not a massive fan of the team challenges, I think it adds an unnecessary tension and stress to the event. Granted, I do think it works better within the confines of silliness inherent to the Sewing Bee Transformation Challenge than it ever did on Tom Daley’s Mostly Just Crocheted Knitted Murder Island

or at least on Sewing Bee you never get the impression that the contestants are all secretly digging a hole in the courtyard to escape their textile-based prison.

The teams did end up going with very different kinds of Girl Group – as decided by the fabrics. There’s only really one direction you an go in once you’re forced to wrestle a mannequin into a pleather pillowcase

at that point, the easy clean bedroom fabric has very much dictated that what you’re going to do is make slutty, slutty K-pop costumes whether you like it or not!

and I have to say, they all really pulled it off with this very Survivor-era Destiny’s Child ensemble

the only thing the judges really picked the group up on was the fact there wasn’t enough of a personality shift between each outfit – they’re all a bit The Kelly where every girl group needs a Poor Michelle and a You’re Beyonce (“thank you”)

but I think this was a challenge that really benefitted Anna – it was nice to see her engaging with such a wildly different aesthetic to the one we’ve come to associate her with. Gun to my head, I’m not sure I would’ve picked out the whale tail thong as hers – I’m not actually sure who I would’ve pinned that on?

I personally really liked Emma’s the most

there’s just something about an asymmetrically cut diagonal skirt that is so peak early 2000s girl group to me.

So while that group went about creating outfits for a VMAs performance that you’re a little uncomfortable watching with your parents, the other three were saddled with denim and gingham

whose bedrooms had they raided for all of this!?

fine, don’t answer it!
Much like pleather picking their Kink-pop destiny, team Dorothy Gale over here were ultimately going in a distinctly more Now That’s What I Call Kidz Bop direction which sadly for them when you’re up against Blackpink up there, you are unfortunately always going to The Girl Group Called Girl Band in the corner

they were going for a very Spice Girls influence, so they all picked their Spice Girls personas that they’d get to pretend to be in the playground during break time

and you’d think that after Being Ginger™ had become a defining point of her characterisation on Sewing Bee that it’d be a no-brainer for Adele…

YOU HAD ONE JOB. Personally, my favourite was always Suspiciously Stained Spice

don’t worry, there’s nothing that a judicious use of glittery rickrack can’t hide – I feel like the Haberdashery’s trim section being opened this week was a bit of a trap

you can really begin to see where this team kind of began to lose track of the whole Girl Group aspect of the challenge because a sensible knee-length skirt is not really screaming girl group performance to me

Rebecca’s bellbottoms are hilariously camp in a very fun sort of Sabrina Carpenter “I’m doing this on purpose” way. But I just don’t see it for most of Heather’s and Adele’s. Although I do actually think Adele’s completely superfluous and barely functioning bucket hat is somehow the most girl group thing about this team

it’s very early 2000s Britney and her fedora obsession

An Official Girl Group Outfit Ranking:
1. Anna’s Kink-pop Headliner
2. It’s Anna’s But There’s A Skull So You Know She’s The Alt One
3. Emma’s Not-so-Poor Michelle
4. Summertime Picnic Spice
5. Sensible Knee-length Skirt Spice
6. Superfluous Hat Spice

Now That’s What I Call Disco!

For their Made to Measure Challenge, the sewers were having to throw it back to the era of Disco for Disco INSPIRED outfits

tacking on the “inspired ” to the end of it like Melinda Verga suddenly realising what she’d said

did kind of muddy the waters of the challenge’s parameters as to whether the judges wanted an actual outfit fit for the disco movement (which they did) or whether it just looked a bit like the word “Disco” was somewhere on the moodboard during the conceptualising process (which they didn’t) – Beth unfortunately found out that a pair of wafty trousers was not going to cut it

to be fair to her, it is a cool outfit but I think just a little too contemporary looking and almost too wearable. Throw a stone at any music festival and you’ll hit a girl that bought this exact outfit off Cider (don’t throw stones at Glasto!) The big issue for Esme was that there was no sparkle to it – which was also a route that Rebecca took, harkening to the designs of Halston

Amber Butchart will be waiting for you in the car park, Rebecca. Educational history segments are HER turf

and this Reithian piece of BBC light entertainment isn’t big enough for the both of you!

Rebecca’s does do a better job of looking like it comes from the realms of disco than Beth’s did and her model looks absolutely sensational in it and if I were her would dress like this for the rest of my life

but there something about it that is almost too formal and reserved. I think she over-refined it to the point that it’s gone beyond Studio 54 and landed in Actress Over 50 who is nominated for Best Actress but knows she’s not going to win – hey Glenn Close, hey!

But while you could go not-disco-enough, there was also the risk of going too Disco and ending up looking a little bit like you just bought the cheapest Dancing Disco Diva costume off of FancyDress.com (not sponsored)

I mean, she wasn’t *not* aiming for Your Mum’s Friend Sandra who has gone to ABBA Voyage 5 times

and Patrick can spread his pocket hating propaganda as much as he wants (they’re for the cocaine, Patrick!)

but I think the outfits biggest problem is that the textiles just aren’t working very well together. That pink is great but it just looks too Frankenstein’d with that really heavy gunmetal sequin. But I also realise, I personally, do not like flared trousers when the flare is a different fabric to the trousers, I think it makes an outfit look very stumpy.

So those were the two polar opposite ends of the Sewing Bee Disco Acceptability Spectrum with Anna, Emma and Heather all landing somewhere within the middle. Although, if anything Anna’s just sort of an emboldened question mark on its disco identity form

it’s certainly a dance costume, there’s enough silver lamé to make all five SNOWDANCE gifs in just one of those elephantine trousers

Anna’s model did a much better job of making it not look like like she was fighting for her life against wanting to have sex with a Christmas turkey than Brendan did. All these years later and I still cannot comprehend the plot of SNOWDANCE other than One Man’s Carnal Desires For Thigh Meat (The Armie Hamer Story.)
To me it weirdly almost reads very Country and Western? With the fringed gloves, neckerchief top and space-age Yosemite Sam trousers that looks very chaps-like

but I do deeply appreciate the outfits commitment to stupid because it is Very Silly™, I just don’t think “Disco” is where my mind goes when I look at it? Whereas Heather looks like she kidnapped her model from 1973 in the middle of her fourth cocaine-fuelled bender this week

I am obsessed with this woman – I want to know all of her incredibly salacious stories about the glitterati of Manhattan. And when you can tell exactly who this outfit is for (regardless of whether Heather meant it for CSI Sex Worker Who gets One Voice Line or not) it’s a sign of a very good outfit. There was just the slight issue of the crotch of the trousers being a touch too long

it’s for the cocaine! I think my favourite part of the trousers, and Beth also had this, was that because she was using a sequined fabric that came on a sheer mesh, she had to deploy Modesty Hot Pants

and I just think that’s a very funny turn of phrase. Modesty Hot Pants could also feasibly be the name of a drag queen competing on the next series of Drag Race UK – it is a BAD year for drag names. I haven’t stopped thinking about Coral-Hole Mandi for 2 weeks now

just muttering it to myself like a witch’s chant, determined to find out what the play on words is.

Last we have Emma who had the most gorgeous fabric

and was using Sylvester as the main inspiration for her cape-backed Kaftan mini dress

I love that the outfit made really good use of the fabric’s pattern, it would’ve been a shame to see that chopped up and shortened. The biggest problem to me, purely within the parameters of it being a sewing competition, is that it maybe doesn’t seem technical enough? Especially when you’ve got Rebecca working for extra credit over there

but I think it was a very GOOD outfit that worked wonders on her model, the fit and shaping of that cinch in the front was what the outfit lived and died by and Emma really pulled it off.

An Unofficial Disco-inspired Outfit Ranking:
1. They Said “Inspired” and She Heard “Obliterate Your Nostrils”
2. You Better Not Be A Disco Shower Curtain When I Get Home…
3. Anna’s Space-age Yosemite Sam
4. Rebecca’s Disco Valedictorian
5. Disco by Cider
6. There’s No Such Thing As A Disco Pocket

Personally, I was fully behind Heather’s historically accurate coke fiend for Garment of the Week, sure there was a slight technical error in the trousers but… I LOVE HER

I want her to give me incredibly sage advice in the ladies toilet. I think’s perfect in spite of the long crotch. But alas, the judges didn’t see the vision of my latest Sewing Bee obsession, as they gave the accolade to Anna

and I think she deserved it in so far as she pulled off some very intricate sewing with a fabric that did not want her to pull of some very intricate sewing. I just didn’t really see the disco in all of it beyond it being silver?

As for the elimination, given how the first two challenges had gone the writing was on the wall – it’s VERY hard to lift yourself out of elimination if you’ve bottomed the Pattern Challenge and the Transformation Challenge this late in the competition and Adele just hadn’t managed to hit the same high that Heather’s model looked like she was hitting

it seems like she had a great time on the show and she had some really strong makes over the weeks – winning episode 1 and her Bee Girl costume in Kid’s Week could easily have won that week too.

And so, onwards to Literary Icons Week!