"Whose Seams Will Reign Supreme??" A Sewing Contest Introduction

Becca here, and super excited to share with you a brand.new.kind. of sewing contest! 

I LOVE watching my favorite sewing personalities step up to plate and bring their A game in sewing contests around the blogosphere. The creative themes, the inspiring outfits, the voting, and agonizing wait to see if your favorites will "live" to see another week! It's all so exciting!

But it's also very time consuming. Back to back weeks of sewing entries? I marvel at anyone who can pull that off, especially while simultaneously juggling professional and domestic responsibilities. 

So I set my mind to craft a competition that would challenge each participant, but would only ask of each contestant one entry. And I found my inspiration.... On the Food Network. Obviously.

For those of you who aren't familiar, there's a great one-episode-showdown series called Iron Chef. It matches challenger chefs with their celebrity-chef counterparts, considering each participants specialties and interests. Dueling one another would be an interesting enough match to begin with, but they step it up with an added challenge. Each chef has to use a "secret ingredient" in their meals. Whoever best incorporates the prompt wins points with the judges, and ultimately the duel. 

No, no, I didn't invite you here to advertise a cooking competition. But that model will look very familiar to you as I introduce....

Top Stitcher: Season 1

I've assembled a core group of some of Pattern Revolution's finest contributors, and assigned them each a sew specialty. Then I recruited challenger bloggers who share those specialties, and assigned them each a deadline and a creative prompt to interpret in their Sew-Downs.

I guess this makes me your Alton Brown, contest coordinator and commentator. Special thanks to Pattern Revolution for playing the role of "Kitchen Stadium", and hosting the first season of this competition!

But there's one more element I haven't yet mentioned. FAN PARTICIPATION! You contribute in two seriously major ways. 

  1. Judging. Each week, you'll be casting your votes for each contestant based on provided criteria. So PLEASE come out to support all the amazing talent participating!
  2. Sew-Along. Inspired by a prompt? Please, take the next 8 weeks to sew your own piece! There will be a linky posted Thursday  March 5th, and will be open for submissions through April 23rd. Pattern Revolution admins have promised to recruit one heck of a sew along prize, so tune in Thursday for that announcement as well!

I hope you'll love this series as much as I do! Read all the challenge details here!

Sewing Specialties     |     Challenge Prompts     |     Voting Criteria      |     Challenger Line-Up


We kick off the season Tuesday with two of the strongest sewists I know! Read up on Suzanne and Michelle's upcycle history, and what prompt their tackling in this week's rematch.