The Great British Sewing Bee -The Final

Aw I can't believe its all over - so quick! Firstly, a huge massive congratulations to Ann! She is one awesome lady and if I'm anything like her when I'm in my 80's, I'll be one lucky lady.

I know it might have looked like the competition was fierce at times but behind the scenes we all got on so well and really supported each other and I don't think I could have gone through it with a nicer bunch of people!

So, back to the final.....the pressure in the sewing room for those two days was huge! I felt like I had to try my absolute best, but sometimes when you try to hard, things don't always work the way you had hoped.

When we were making the man's shirt, while Ann and Sandra eased their sleeve heads in no problems, I had managed to miss a notch out in the yoke so nothing lined up properly. It's these sort of errors that are easy to figure out at home with a bit of time, but under the pressure, lights and cameras, its really hard to think straight and as I had never made a shirt like that before, I just kept making silly mistakes.

Embelishing the bag was another complete miss judgement of time. Hand sewing does take a bit of time to do, and is much more suited to an evening or afternoon in front of the telly with a cup of tea. I had this picture in my head of what I wanted to do and I'm sure if I had all day to do it, the bag would have looked a heck of a lot better than it did!

It was at that point that I started to feel like there was no coming back, but when my sister showed up as my model for the final challenge - I have never been so shocked in all my life!! They didn't even give us time to take it in. It was just - here are the new models, right on you go, make an evening dress - 8 hours, go!! It really picked me up though and I don't think I could have done it without her! It really lightened the mood and I knew whatever happened I would have a cracking time anyway.

I had never made anything this complicated before, but I surprised myself again and it just shows that if you have some skills and you just read the instructions that come with the pattern, then step by step you can work it out and make something amazing!

It was so lovely to see all the contestants back at the end too. I wish we could all have a sewing bee together all the time!!

I just want to say a huge massive thank you to Patrick and May who were brilliant judges and have given me a lot of hints, tips and encouragement to go on challenging myself and keep sewing! Also, a huge thank you to Claudia for keeping us constantly entertained and being a support when the pressure was on. She encouraged me to chop that dress in half in episode three, but I'm glad I didn't take her advice last night when she said that the judges don't really mean it when they say they want things to fit! Nice try Claudia!

This one is me and Claire-Louise who was the behind the scenes sewing expert on the show! She is one clever lady and you can read all about her exciting adventures as a Theatrical Costumier on her blog! The rest of the crew and team that created the show are also such an amazing group of talented people! You wouldn't believe the logistics involved in organising everything to do with the show and they were so prescise and paid such attention to detail in everything they did from the set, to the lighting and lots of other technical stuff that I don't even understand. So a huge thank you to them too for creating such a lovely show!

I hope you have all enjoyed watching the show as much as I did taking part! And I'm so excited that there is going to be a second series!

Better be off now, I've got the small matter of a shop to open at the weekend! Look forward to meeting you on Saturday!