Sometimes I am amazed at how susceptible I am to television. The Great British Sewing Bee started on BBC Two soon after Easter. The show is similar to the Great British Bake Off, but instead of best bakes they are looking for Britain’s top amateur sewer.
The contestants have a number of challenges to show the judges, May Martin and Patrick Grant, that they have a good grasp of working with different techniques and materials.
The programme advocates making your own wardrobe rather than just buying off the rack. It’s really impressive to see people whipping together dresses, blouses and trousers and enjoying it. To get the audience joining in this sewing revolution they set little projects to try out.
Over on my television review blog, TV Talk, I mentioned that this was the weakest part of the show. There was an expectation that most homes have a sewing machine hidden away. It skipped the step from an interest in sewing to a person who had all the equipment and some basic knowledge.
Despite this I decided to make a smaller version of a laundry bag that was on the programme. You can find the pattern on the Radio Times website.
I got a little Zoom recorder as a birthday present last year, it’s really handy to stick in my bag when interviewing people. However, there is all sorts in my bag so I thought about making a little bag for it as protection. And actually the laundry bag design looked perfect.
I don’t have a sewing machine but I do have a little sewing kit that my Mum put together for me to take to university. A few nights this week were spent stitching together pieces of fabric by hand hoping that it was going to end up looking vaguely like a bag soon. It’s oddly satisfying when something starts coming together and looking like it should.
The most complicated bit was the drawstring top, which took me a while to get my head round, and I still don’t think I got it quite right. By this point there was a lot of fabric too so my stitches started to get a bit big which I can gloss over for now but will have to sort out eventually.
The most important thing is my Zoom does fit in the bag.
This is what it looks like finished.
Now I’m starting to think if I should do another project. I want it to be something that I would actually use, so I don’t want to practice by making hundreds of cushion covers. So any ideas of things for beginners to make?