The Great British Sewing Bee: Episode 1

May 26, 2024 3:15 AM - Season 10, Episode 1

Week 1 of series 10 of the Great British Sewing Bee. Ten new contestants, a new presenter, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, and the same two judges, Esme Young and Patrick Grant. The tasks this week are a denim skirt, a t-shirt transformation, and a casual dress.

Here is the list of contestants. Here is the programme's Instagram account. Sewing Bee Reddit.

Patrick Grant has had a lot of coverage recently, as he has a book out. Interview in Prima. There was an interview in the Times, but paywalled. He has sounded off about M and S. An older podcast interview from 2019.

Short recent interview with Esme Young in the Guardian.

Instagram accounts for contestants, as far as I can find them: Ailsa; Alex; Comfort; [Don]; Georgie; [Janet]; Lauren; Luke; Marcus; Neil; Pascha; Suzy.

The Fold Line blog has pattern suggestions for this episode. The Woolpatch has a reaction video (45 minutes).

posted by paduasoy (14 comments total)

This is always the highlight of my year. I did find the first episode a bit stressful to watch. The filming seemed a bit choppy. They didn't give enough time for the first challenge - no-one finished. This is apparently the youngest cohort overall, and the one with the oldest contestant (must be Don, 84).
posted by paduasoy at 3:17 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

Adding an interview with Kiell Smith-Bynoe in iNews: I don’t understand why they asked me to host Sewing Bee, and a shorter one in Gathered.
posted by paduasoy at 3:31 AM on May 26

If you can access the Times interview with Patrick Grant, it was good. Talked about his career, and the death of his father early in the pandemic, and his anger over that. He has spoken about the government recently on Debate Night: "we have had a Conservative government that has done more harm and less good to both the country and the general population, than any government in my 50 years".
posted by paduasoy at 3:38 AM on May 26

And Janet's Instagram.
posted by paduasoy at 3:41 AM on May 26

And a review at Ariadne Reviews.
posted by paduasoy at 4:00 AM on May 26

It was a fun episode, except for multiple things about the first challenge that had me muttering at the screen. I'm not sure how strong this year's bunch is, but hopefully I'm wrong!

First time Esme's flirted with a contestant?
posted by trig at 9:00 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

Also wow Patrick doesn't pull any punches in that "sounded off" article: “The sad thing is: the cheaper the clothing that we buy, the more likely the money is to bypass anyone that you would consider nice and end up in the pockets of somebody you would consider to be a bastard:
posted by trig at 9:10 AM on May 26 [3 favorites]

I don’t understand why they asked me to host Sewing Bee

Neither did Esme 😂
posted by ellieBOA at 8:54 AM on May 27

I enjoyed the new host more than the last one but way less than Joe. Agree that this bunch of contestants doesn’t seem great, but they’re learning sewing against the clock as they go (i think it was the very first that was so disastrous?)
posted by supercres at 1:55 PM on May 27

I should be able to buy the episodes of this. : /
posted by Glinn at 9:27 PM on May 27

Glinn: agreed. But if you don't mind some sketchiness, dailymotion and other sites post episodes. There's a site called hdclump that pulls in episodes from a few sources like that; the reddit sewing bee page links to it. You can point yt-dlp at the links and download the episodes without even visiting the sites, which is nice. And there are torrents...

But yeah it's weird this isn't on any streaming services, especially now that Pottery Throwdown is.
posted by trig at 12:34 AM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Glinn, sometimes iPlayer can be accessed abroad with a VPN set to East London.
posted by ellieBOA at 2:19 AM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Hmm, not sure there is enough interest for me to post Week 2. Maybe it's too difficult for MeFites to access. I was a bit disappointed with the Transformation challenge this week- not really structural. Though of course the CSM students probably have several weeks at least to plan! Feel more could have been done with the triangles.
posted by paduasoy at 1:13 AM on June 3

Maybe it would seem more accessible with an explicit "episode links are posted weekly on the Sewing Bee reddit"?

Or maybe this could turn into a full season thread.

I did kind of feel that the editors did the contestants a disservice by showing all the crazy stuff the CSM students make (with time and probably unlimited fabric) juxtaposed with a 90-minute "use one cricket uniform" challenge. Why set expectations like that! Using that thick-yarn knit in a cool way seemed especially hard. But whatever, it's fun.
posted by trig at 2:30 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]