Great British Sewing Bee is back on 15th July

[BlackAmericanoNoSugar]

I'm looking forward to it.

i am with you on all that except that Gaynor really does seem to not be enjoying it, and not really prepared for the challenges.

If you are going to do that, and want them to focus on the sewing skills rather than go all out to be the whacky "personality" with the cool designs - then you need to make THAT your "personality".

Sitting in the sewing room with half an hour to spare after your m2m without either trying to look busy, or add to your design is just daft. CF Kit and his 5 minute (godawful) bag.

I agree. If she had time to spare she could have used her sewing skills to add something extra - an accessory or some decoration maybe.

I made it really clear that I don't normally knock personalities on these shows as everyone is different and have not enjoyed reading some of the critiques of Kit's behaviour on here, as an example.

But (and again this could be the edit), Gaynor seems to have got stuck in an anti creative rut . She knows her choices are plain and simple and doesn't seem able to think that through. She lowers the mood of the programme - this may well be very unfair editing. She may well not be like that as far as other contestants go.

I wouldn't say it's an age thing but she doesn't take feedback on board so we haven't seen any growth. She did seem to change her mind about the collar colour on the first challenge and got praise for that.

If the brief is to make a Pop Art dress then you can't just say 'That's isn't my thing. That's not my personality. ' you are expected to deliver the brief.

The problem is that she is grumbling about all the challenges as if they were not what she expected. There seems to be an unwillingness to really give it a go on her part. I can sympathise with a contestant feeling out of their depth with the occasional theme or challenge but for Gaynor, she lacks enthusiasm for all of them.

We liked Gaynor in this house but I think the editing isn't doing her any favours and she always seems to chose very tweee/safe fabrics like in the GPerry challenge.

She either needs to think well I like this fabric so let's go for the complete opposite or for the redo or MTM somehow factor an enormous bow somewhere in to the design to appeal to Esmes likes

I don't think his art is all that, personally.

I have liked all the contestants this year as they are all excellent at their craft. The standard has repeatedly been described as being very high and so it does come down to fitting the brief. Sadly Stuart didn't do that and he looks old enough to know about pop art.

Esme rightly said it was impressionistic and it also didn't fit the model - two clear mistakes in the m2m when the standard is so high.

Now can we move on from personal attacks about demeanour and age?

She did. She seemed to make a point of saying it. I think they really got on.

Do you mean for the pattern challenge? The point was that Perry is someone who wears those dresses – I don't think Clarice Cliff or Barbara Hepworth did?
But I agree, he's a bit unsavoury to say the least.

We liked Gaynor in this house but I think the editing isn't doing her any favours and she always seems to chose very tweee/safe fabrics like in the GPerry challenge.

they told them to choose a fabric that reflected their personality, IIRC. Which is why Patrick was joking with Stuart (and why i was shouting at Stuart when he was picking the fabrics) that he was surprised it wasn't all tweed.

i get why they picked that style of dress. I am disappointed and annoyed they picked it because of Grayson "look at me aren't i wacky" Perry.

It was, as a challenge, very clever and showed up some serious skills in the sewists.

They could have, for example, picked Clarice Cliff (as an artist famous for her ceramics) as inspo for a pattern challenge. Rather than Grayson "look at all the sex i sneak into home textile designs" Perry.

Are you the thread police . This thread is about a show and if someone on that show is affecting your enjoyment of it I think I’m entitled to say that .

Well, as I said, I don't much like GP either.
I think they wanted to use as inspiration someone who wears/wore that style of dress. A challenge based on Clarice Cliff or Barbara Hepworth would have been about drawing inspiration from their art rather than their clothes.
For baby doll dresses I thought maybe they could have looked at the grunge trend of the late 80s and 90s e.g. Courtney Love. Although I suppose that's a slightly different kind of dress.
I agree it was a good challenge and showed their skills/lack of very well.

Yes, I meant more as motifs, it would have worked better on a m2m than a pattern challenge.

Agree.
Speaking of motifs, when Stuart said he decided against Keith Haring because the outlines would take too long, I thought he could have picked one or two Haring shapes and blown them up huge, so his garment would have a few large, bold black lines.

That would have been good. I like Haring so was a bit disappointed he didn't try something.

Gaynor is clearly feeling overwhelmed and knows that her future m2m designs are simpler than others. I'd imagine that would knock your confidence.

I do feel for her, but I also have to wonder if she'd ever actually watched the show before applying? You only need watch a few to realise that they like boldness and originality as well as good sewing.

He could have created his own inspired by Haring. I wonder if there would be copyright ©️ issues for straightforward copying.

yes. I said all that. I don't need people repeating my posts back to me in an "easier to digest" format.

I literally said it was a great challenge because of the techniques. But i wish they had left Grayson "pervert" Perry out of it.

I don't know how many more times i need to say this.

and yy to pp mentioning Keith Haring. You could have done a 2d thing like Caz did, with a black outline that extended past the head and down the legs!

i think i may be like her were i ever to appear though. The reality of being on the show, compared to watching it at home and (in her case thinking "i can sew better than that") and then confronting the pretty challenging filming schedule must be a bit of a shock.

I think Grayson Perry's name was mentioned once on the programme and we did not see him. I dread to think how many times it has been mentioned in this thread.

I liked the dress.

Clearly people have opinions. And they are pointing out in different ways that they don't necessarily think the publicly funded broadcaster should include a yet another (Savile, Edwards, all the DJs etc etc) sex-obsessed idiot on us?

Again: The actual challenge was brilliant. We did not need that man's name to be mentioned at all.

As far as I am aware he has never been accused of assaulting anybody and I would rather discuss the actual challenges in the show.