Great British Sewing Bee is back. Thread 2 - Art week is our past, Movies are our present

[BlackAmericanoNoSugar]

For when the first thread is full. I may be watching but won't be posting because I won't have access to a computer and I need the speed of a keyboard to get my opinion out there before I forget what it is.

I hate the Bake-Off biscuit week for precisely that reason. All I want from a biscuit is that it should taste good, I don't want to have to be dismantling elaborate biscuit constructions. At least other weeks they do relatively normal cakes and bread, and they've rowed back from the phase when they did all sorts of ridiculous creations that no-one had ever heard of.

I've just caught up with this week's episode. Not surprised Kit went out as his MTM was poor. I also don't think he should have won the transformation challenge. Yes, the brief was a colour blocked garment, but he used only the main body fabric of the polo shirts. Usually use of the other elements is encouraged and two of the other sewers incorporated those. Kit's also had very minimal sewing compared to everyone else's garment. Sometimes I do wonder what the judging criteria are!

Anyway, looks like a strong final awaits.

And the back wasn't even colour blocked. It was all one colour. Yet they criticised Kaz's for having a section that was too plain.

The judging criteria is whatever Esme decides it is, once she has worked out which garment was made by her favourite. This week she had the D rings and amorphous dress to guide her.

And yet he had to leave that week.

Talking of other shows, did anyone watch the one hosted by Sandi Toksvig where contestants made and designed rooms for dolls houses?

Now that was fabulous!

Maybe because his m2m was so obviously bad that nothing could save him.

I think so. But I was also thinking back on previous series, where the maddest transformations have won again & again. My hunch is that Patrick doesn’t care too much about the transformation round, but fights harder in the pattern challenge and M2M.

FWIW I’m sad that Kit didn’t make the final as I’d like to have seen his final M2M, but his dress this week was a shocker.

No, but I would have loved that!

I really enjoyed this. My Dad made dolls houses and miniature furniture and other things. He would have loved it.

Oh yes I really enjoyed that one. I think it got cancelled though. Such a shame. The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge.

I'm currently re-watching the last episode and I didn't realise/remember just how arrogant Kit was in the PC.
He's just said "I don't even need the pattern" and "out of the 8 PC, I've won 6".
He's also just said "I know it's probably not the right fabric".
I'm not sure what his issue was in this episode. ..hubris, arrogance, nerves...but he was the right one to go imo.
I'm looking forward to the final.

...and I'd forgotten Yasmin didn't pattern match her PC.
They look really good, though!

That was a good show, not keen on sandi toksvig but the things they made were fascinating.

Esme said she didn't care about pattern matching which surprised me. That pattern fabric wouldn't have been very difficult to match.

I have no gifts in sewing but I think if I didn't know how to pattern match or didn't want to, I'd choose a plain fabric.

I sometimes wonder why they don't slice some sample bits off and really have a think about the properties of the fabric first before committing. I suppose that would be boring TV.

Years ago there was a miniature museum in Oban. It was amazing. What nearly sticks in my mind is the copper tea pots, or sets, made from a penny. I think they showed how many items they could make from one penny, or something along those lines. It was lovely. And so, so clever.

@CaptainMyCaptain
I was surprised too...it was a tartan!
Esme's judging is not very consistent

I love a bit of pattern matching, but it does take time and more see-through pattern paper than they were using so I'm not too surprised that Yasmin didn't do it. I would have chosen plain fabric though. Not that I would EVER do a pattern challenge, I'm really slow. I would still be considering the merits of different fabrics when they called half time.

This is a dress I made a few years ago and I pattern matched the bodice seam from the neckline to where the godet was inserted. I was really pleased with myself, it's probably the thing that I like best about the whole dress. It did add a massive amount of time to the cutting part, partly because I was learning how to do it but even if I was experienced it would still add a good 20 mins and that was for one short seam not across a fly or worrying about also matching side seams.

Respect @BlackAmericanoNoSugar . I try to match stripes for quilt bindings and no matter how careful I am and how many YT videos I watch it's always a good eighth of an inch out, which is a PITA on a fine stripe.

I do think some of this is down to the editing. We see key comments about what the judges believes differentiates the contestants rather than the whole thing.

Are you doing a diagonal seam for joining your quilt binding @TheDameHelenShiteingMirren ? If so then what I would do is iron the 45 degree fold into the top strip then apply either double sided sticky tape or low tack fabric glue right up against the ironed fold line and line it up correctly while folded and use finger pressure to make sure the tape/glue has good adhesion. Then open it out and sew in the valley of the fold. That should stop it from shifting around while sewing.

Alternatively, the way that I did that seam on the dress (after all the faffing to make sure it was cut correctly) was to iron in the fold as above, then line it up and use a tacking stitch. So run the stitch inside the fold for about a cm then come up and do a tiny stitch into the bottom fabric, then run the stitch inside the fold again, all the way along. When you open up the fold to machine stitch you follow the line of the tacking thread. Once stitched you just pull the tacking thread out. I used a Craftsy class, I can't remember the name of the person but it was just about pattern matching and there were loads of different methods.

Your first paragraph is exactly what I tried @BlackAmericanoNoSugar . In the YT video I watched the person drew a line in the fold line to stitch down and that's the only thing I didn't do. It might well be my eyesight, so I can try that next time. But I also like your idea of tacking, thank you, I hadn't thought of that so I'll give that a go too.

@BlackAmericanoNoSugar
That's gorgeous.
I did say to dd that their patterns are on much thicker paper (which I like...Dd is doing a top atm and the thin paper is a real pain...)