The Great British Sewing Bee Series 10: Episode 2

It was Sports Week on The Great British Sewing Bee on Tuesday and we were treated to some incredible garments from this series’ sewers. If you’ve not watched it yet, you can catch up on iPlayer but you don’t have to worry about spoilers here.

As Comfort said: “Let the games begin!”

The pattern challenge was to make a Half-zip Fleece with a collar, long sleeves, breast pocket and a zip on the pocket too. As it was a colour-block pattern, it meant the sewists could get really creative with their colour combos and we loved seeing their choices.

We loved seeing the sporty side of some of the sewers during their VTs, from competitive fencer Pascha to Suzy’s weight-lifting and Marcus on his roller blades. Lauren is a gym fan, Alex runs in Peak District and it’s watersports for Islander Georgie. Last week, we learnt that Janet loves to dance and now we find she hula-hoops too. She certainly made a better job of it than Kiell!

The fleece used in the pattern challenge was a stretchy fabric which can make cutting out and sewing tricky. Check out our top tips for working with stretch fabrics.

A cover stitch machine was used to create a suitably stretchy seam. If you’re playing Sewing Bee Bingo, this challenge also gave us the first mention of stitching in the ditch. Georgie also helpfully reminded everyone to match their notches - a great piece of advice for any pattern.

After last week’s struggle with time management in the pattern challenge, there were some fantastic finished fleeces for the judges to cast their eyes over. Well done everyone!

What was your favourite colour combo?

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Next up was a fantastic transformation challenge inspired by the White Challenge set to first year students at Central St Martin’s College. To keep with Sports Week theme, the sewists had to use cricket whites, including knitted jumpers, polo shirts, trousers, pads, gloves and (ahem) boxes.

“As the great Muhammed Ali said, ‘Transform like a butterfly, stitch like a bee!’”

Kiell Smith-Bynoe

This challenge was all about shape and texture and the judges were after an avant garde outfit. As Esme said, “I want to be bowled over”. The sewists were all extremely creative and we were really impressed with the finished outfits (we also spied the fork trick for making pleats, ‘owzat!)

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The final hurdle was the made-to-measure. As it’s an Olympic year, the judges asked for a sport’s kit that can be worn on the World stage. It could be for any sport but had to represent a country.

Our Knit T-shirt sewing pattern would be a great choice for this challenge and can easily be customised. It only uses 1m of fabric, why not give it a go?

There were many different fabrics chosen, including mesh and a lot of stretchy material. “Stretch fabric is sewn in a particular way,” said Esme. “They should use a four-thread overlocker stitch, and if you don’t sew it properly and use the proper machines, when it’s stretched, the thread can break!”

There were a several sports represented with sprinting and gymnastics being a popular choice. We also learnt even more about the contestants as many were influenced by family members when choosing their countries. Alex’s dad is from Scotland, Lauren’s mum is from Jamaica and Georgie’s dad is from Trinidad & Tobago. Comfort was representing Uganda while Pascha was making an outfit for her javelin-throwing godbrother.

Janet promised her Ukranian gymnastics outfit would have the “Janet Jazz” (which is our new favourite expression!) and it certainly did. Just look at this gorgeous colour!

Lucy practised hers seven times. Luke, less so, but we loved their confidence as they reassured Emse: “It’s just a bit of sewing!”

Missed Episode One? Read our review here.

Images: BBC/Love Productions