Musings on... The Great British Sewing Bee

Hello all, sorry for the SERIOUS delay in posting. I blame it on my dissertation (and also some super work experience at a TV production company... so really it's a lack of dissertation...) But I doubt many of you are waiting with baited breath. Here it is anyway. 

So The Great British Sewing Bee is a thing. I saw it advertised and was seriously sceptical. SURELY there can't be another Bake-Off spin-off? What with Paul Hollywood on our screens with his sexy bread programme (if you don't believe the sexy part, watch it... trust me) and Bake Off specials all over the shop, I felt like we had enough wholesome Great British-ness on our screens. 

The premise is the same as Bake Off, except now its 'makes' instead of 'bakes'. The experts are the sewing equivalent of Mary and Paul - Mary Martin,"the best sewing teacher in the world" and Patrick Grant from Savile Row, with Claudia Winkleman in the Mel/Sue role. Not impressed with them so far... these guys just aren't that funny and nothing quite beats Mary's cheeky 'soggy bottom' line. Each week, the contestants (mainly women and gay men - also a token bearded/pierced guy) have to do a series of 'makes'. This week, they had to make an A line skirt from scratch, customise a neckline of a t-shirt and make a day dress, again from scratch. Now this is where the complaining ends. 

It's SO addictive. Ten minutes in I was ashamedly engrossed in the A line skirts (how do they cut in straight lines? Why do sewing machines have pedals? How can they see those tiny tiny stitches? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ZIP IS WRONG?!) and then realised that being ashamed is silly. This show will make sewing cool! Just like Bake Off, everyone will now be setting up a sewing machine and making their own clothes. Perhaps an exaggeration, but sewing is officially cool, thanks to the BBC. 

The equivalent of the Bake Off tent/gazebo thing is an East End sewing workshop, an Aladdin's cave of fabric, ribbon, sewing machines, scissors etc. It's a shabby chic kind of thing... which is SO in at the moment (don't you know) with the added brilliance of a balcony thing round the top, enabling some creative and interesting shots of the sewers down below.

I think what makes this show brilliant is its reality. These people are normal, nervous, and trying to do their best (although beasts on a sewing machine), encouraging the feeling that maybe my future career lies in sewing - if they can do it, I can too! 

But let's be realistic here. I am crap at sewing. But watching others do it gives me a virtual ability to judge (that scalloped edge is RUBBISH) which is infinitely more fun. There's tension, there's tears and there's pressure, and when people are ironing pleats one minute before the end of the challenge, you know it's all going to unravel...