Great British Sewing Bee Book Review – From Stitch to Style

I’m sure everyone has heard of The Great British Bake Off. If you haven’t, where have you been?! You watch a group of people who enjoy baking, go head to head in order to win the competition. The great Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood are the judges and decide who goes through each stage. It makes great TV as you get to witness both masterpieces as well as baking disasters!

Anyway… there has been something for all of us sewers out there to be excited about! The TV programme Great British Sewing Bee. It has the exact idea as GBBO, but only with sewing. I have loved watching it, seeing all the cool and funky ideas the contestants come up with, as well as the catastrophes! It has been such a hit so far, and I love the fact that due to the TV programme, people want to take up sewing for a hobby!  If you haven’t seen it, tune in tonight for the Grand Final.  I have really enjoyed the series, it has been a tight series and hard to pinpoint a definite winner. 

Social media has been brilliant over the last few weeks with all the comments and opinions on the current season of The Great British Sewing Bee. 

Last year the only viewing I got was the Final. With only seeing one night of it last year is feels like I have been waiting an absolute age to see it.  Feeling I had missed out and to take the edge of it, I bought the book from last year which accompanies the series which made me feel part of what they up to and what challenges they were presented with other the weeks. 

When I heard the sewing bee was on a Monday evening this year, I thought Happy Days but this time I bought the new book at £9.99 from Amazon at the beginning of the series.

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I was a bit sceptical about it as I didn’t know how they would better last years publishing but once again was I wasn’t disappointed also it teased me as to what I was going to see over the weeks but didn’t spoil the viewing in any way it more so made me curious as to how they were going to carry out their challenges.  The book includes full sized paper patterns to make 27 projects, so when you consider the price of an individual pattern, its a bit of a bargain. You will need to trace the patterns you want to use of your size individually as they are on both sides of the pattern and are overlapping

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The patterns range from beginner, immediate and advanced with each pattern stating its level of difficulty.  

There are patterns for children, women and a few for men.

The beginning of the book brings you back to the bare basics before you do a single stitch in giving you your sewing box tools, guiding you using a sewing machine, helping you find your pattern size to using the patterns and abbreviating all the sewing jargon not to mentions lots of helpful tips and hints

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I have selected a few pattern for the book to add to my wish list  which consist of quick sews in a night to others that will allow me to try out new techniques.

There was an extra treat on the series this year as one of the contestants, Angeline was from Northern Ireland.

She created some beautiful garments which was proven by achieving garment of the weeks on a couple of occasions

One garment she made which inspired me was a little girls red cape, hence I have added the one from the book to my wish list.  Hope mine turns out as good 😉

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