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feather_ghyllI’d got the impression that this show was unlikely to return as it was cut from the same cloth as The Great British Bake-off, which infamously left the BBC for Channel 4, so I was glad to learn it was coming back to BBC2 where it aired on Tuesday night. Honestly, I was less glad to hear about the change of presenter, because Claudia Winkelman is one of my favourite beings on TV, and I remember celebrity charity spin-offs for the show with other presenters that didn’t work as well. In Joe Lycett, we had a new presenter who was as nervous as the sewers, certainly in the first round. By the time he’d showed his ignorance, made people laugh and helped get clothes on mannequins, he’d settled a lot, although he seems to get on better with Esme than Patrick.
A tough first challenge, which was really about choosing fabric wisely, as well as cutting and sewing and following instructions. (If you can’t tell, part of the show’s appeal to me is watching people do something I can’t. My sewing skills were always basic and my sewing messy, and my deteriorating eyesight has made me put sewing aside, but I regard anyone who can operate a sewing machine with great respect.)
The second challenge tested inventiveness, as ever, but also how much they’d been listening to Esme about the denim details, and the third, the long one, was a test of judging what was achievable in the time and under pressure.
There are as of yet too many competitors for them for me to remember all their names, but Alexei’s story jumps out, and it feels like it’s translating his engineer’s brain to the challenges that is going to be his main test, not the MS. Juliet was one of those people who didn’t realise how good she was, coming top in two challenges. However, they were both in challenges where she had a pattern to follow. But you knew she was good when she went and told someone else how to get their sleeve right. There are more experienced sewers and young guns, of which Tom was unsurprisingly the first to go. His problem was aiming too high, because I’m sure that jumpsuit would have looked great if it wasn’t a timed, high-pressure challenge.
It isn’t diverging too much from the tried and tested pattern, which is good. Patrick seemed nicer than I remember. The sewers seem a nice, diverse bunch of enthusiasts, a bit eccentric, which is all the more likeable, and the stories of how sewing is a multi-generational, family thing with parents sewing for and teaching children get to me, as always.
I see that I've confined myself to two post per series in the past, and as it's taken me so long to post this, perhaps it'll be more sensible to emulate that.
By the way, the number of books reread this month: 2.
A tough first challenge, which was really about choosing fabric wisely, as well as cutting and sewing and following instructions. (If you can’t tell, part of the show’s appeal to me is watching people do something I can’t. My sewing skills were always basic and my sewing messy, and my deteriorating eyesight has made me put sewing aside, but I regard anyone who can operate a sewing machine with great respect.)
The second challenge tested inventiveness, as ever, but also how much they’d been listening to Esme about the denim details, and the third, the long one, was a test of judging what was achievable in the time and under pressure.
There are as of yet too many competitors for them for me to remember all their names, but Alexei’s story jumps out, and it feels like it’s translating his engineer’s brain to the challenges that is going to be his main test, not the MS. Juliet was one of those people who didn’t realise how good she was, coming top in two challenges. However, they were both in challenges where she had a pattern to follow. But you knew she was good when she went and told someone else how to get their sleeve right. There are more experienced sewers and young guns, of which Tom was unsurprisingly the first to go. His problem was aiming too high, because I’m sure that jumpsuit would have looked great if it wasn’t a timed, high-pressure challenge.
It isn’t diverging too much from the tried and tested pattern, which is good. Patrick seemed nicer than I remember. The sewers seem a nice, diverse bunch of enthusiasts, a bit eccentric, which is all the more likeable, and the stories of how sewing is a multi-generational, family thing with parents sewing for and teaching children get to me, as always.
I see that I've confined myself to two post per series in the past, and as it's taken me so long to post this, perhaps it'll be more sensible to emulate that.
By the way, the number of books reread this month: 2.
