Bye-bye baking, now sewing’s the thing

CLAUDIA WINKLEMAN is tired. Very tired. Her one-year-old won’t sleep and has just discovered a passion for making loud donkey noises.

Winkleman has also just finished filming her latest show, The Great British Sewing Bee, which, as you might have guessed, is the latest creation from the makers of The Great British Bake Off.

It’s essentially the same show. Two judges – this time Savile Row tailor Patrick Grant and sewing teacher extraordinaire May Martin – set three challenges per episode for eight budding creatives battling it out to be crowned series winner. Except this time they’re not baking, but sewing.

Winkleman jumped at the chance to present it. ‘‘I was obsessed by Bake Off. When it was on, I’d lick the telly,’’ says the 41-year-old.

The decision to base the series on sewing fits with the current craft craze sweeping the UK and beyond.

But there’s more to it than just that, says Winkleman.

‘‘I think a part of it is the recession, people don’t want to spend another £60 on school clothes. They want to alter uniforms from their other kids. They also don’t want to just buy stuff.’’ BUT are eight people sitting in a church with a needle and thread really going to grip the nation? As Winkleman points out, who knew that a tent of contestants making scones would catch on?

‘‘I think it’s exciting to see people making something from nothing,’’ she says. ‘‘At one point they’re asked to make a tailored jacket. I assumed they were made by wizards or dolphins, you can’t be a human and just make a jacket, that’s ridiculous, but they did it right in front of our eyes.’’ Of course there are, inevitably, a few sewing disasters and some of the challenges are intense.

‘‘The contestants would hate me because I’d go in and say, ‘How’s it going?’ And they’d be like, ‘Get out of my way’,’’ Winkleman recalls. ‘‘I think the answer to everything is sugar, so I’d get them chocolate.’’ She also put her new baking skills into practice, bringing in homemade cakes and biscuits on a regular basis. ‘‘I used to go into the supermarket and buy a cake, but after Bake Off I never do that. I bake – badly, but I bake.’’ Just as with Bake Off, the contestants and their stories promise to be a huge pull for Sewing Bee. One in particular stands out – a trucker who drives all day then finds it calming to sew while he watches TV at night.

Winkleman says they’re a lovely bunch of people. ‘‘They are genuinely passionate. They’re not people who want to be on telly, they’re people who want to sew, and that’s the massive difference.’’ Craft-loving viewers can also pick up tips as they watch. ‘‘It’s not bonkers advanced. You’ve not got Heston saying, ‘First things first, we’re going to make slug ice-cream’,’’ Winkleman adds.

There’s also the customary book, of the same title, to accompany the series, packed with handy hints for beginners and confident amateurs alike.

Before Sewing Bee, Winkleman was, by her own admission, a rubbish sewer, though she did dabble a little bit as a youngster. ‘‘I did a bit of sewing when I was a child because my mum loved it,’’ she says.

Mum is author and journalist Eve Pollard, a former editor of the Sunday Mirror and Sunday Express, and possibly not somebody you’d easily imagine sitting at home darning. On the contrary, though, Winkleman says her mother was fond of needlework – and cooking.

‘‘She makes the best quiche you’ve ever had in your life – cheese and onion – and she does tapestries.

We’ve got quite a large collection of odd cushions – my mum found it relaxing,’’ she recalls, although she admits Pollard is a staunch feminist and insisted that her two husbands darned their own socks.

Now, after filming Sewing Bee, Winkleman’s feeling inspired. She was particularly motivated by a challenge in which contestants are given a plain white T-shirt to transform.

‘‘Some of the things they did I just thought, ‘Why aren’t I doing that?’ We all have a top that we haven’t worn for three years or, like me, maternity clothes that we’re still wearing.

At some point I hope I’ll be able to take them in, instead of buying something new.’’ She’s also got her eye on a cupboard full of clothes she’s worn while presenting Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two and the BBC’s Film show – items that normally go to charity shops, but with a bit of alteration could be brought up to date.

Winkleman hopes to look as cool as the school gate mum she admires who is forever customising old items.

‘‘She’ll add a band to a tweed skirt she bought when she was 17 and it will look amazing, better than Prada,’’ she says.

Now that filming’s over, Winkleman is planning to spend time with her children in between work on Strictly and her other BBC TV and radio duties. It’s unlikely she’ll watch Sewing Bee with her kids.

‘‘They don’t watch much telly, they don’t know that I’m on TV. They just think I do a bit of radio.’’ She already bakes with them, though, and recently introduced her daughter to a needle and thread.

‘‘She made a bookmark for my husband the other day and drew something that was meant to be a reindeer.

It wasn’t a reindeer, it looked more like a sperm whale. But I showed her how to sew two little buttons on to it,’’ she says happily.

Sewing novice turned teacher.

Who knows, maybe this time next year we’ll all be sock-darning, clothes-making experts. Stranger things have happened.

• The Great British Sewing Bee is on BBC Two on Tuesdays

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