After a nail-biting final, the Great British Sewing Bee 2023 winner has been crowned.
Asmaa was chosen by judges Esme Young and Patrick Grant to win the coveted title, as the specialist breast surgeon from Cardiff triumphed over the batch of 12 home sewers.
The 46-year-old said, after her win: ‘Thank you. I can’t really put into words how I am feeling.
‘This is not real, this can’t be me, it feels amazing.
‘Amongst everything I have done in the last 45 years of my life – this has to top it all – not the medical degree, not anything else, this is it!’
She added: ‘My grandmother was a seamstress who taught my mother, who then taught me. I think this confirms it is in the blood.
‘The only thing that has really kept me going and kept me balanced in life and especially in the last few years has been sewing – it’s my escape and my way to forget about all the troubles in the world and at work – and I don’t think I will ever ever stop.’
Asmaa won Garment of the Week in Episodes 7, 8, and 9 going up to the final against Mia and Tony R. to become Britain’s Best Amateur Sewer of 2023.
Esme said: ‘Asmaa is a really talented sewer, very precise, very neat and in this last challenge she really pulled it off.’
Patrick added: ‘How you engineered that was out of this world – that final gown was spectacular. I am not sure I have seen anything quite so special on Sewing Bee. Spellbinding!’
Asmaa, who was born in Iraq and spent time studying from her grandmother, a seamstress, during the Iraq-Iran War, would construct outfits for her dolls out of scraps and pieces.
She fled Iraq at the age of 14 and settled in Durham before coming to Cardiff to study medicine, where she currently lives with her husband and two children.
Tonight’s Glamour Week included a Victoriana-style evening gown challenge, followed by the Transformation Challenge, in which they transformed female party attire into a gorgeous men’s red-carpet costume inspired by celebrities such as Billy Porter, Timothee Chalamet, and Harry Styles.
Finally, they designed a Met Gala-worthy ‘two-in-one dress’ for their models, who were friends or family members, and a dress that morphed from one garment to another while on the runway, which required a feat of engineering and a leap of imagination.
Asmaa said: ‘I went into the Final with a lot of nerves and I felt them through the pattern challenge and then my nerves peaked at the transformation challenge.
‘I stopped at one stage, took a deep breath and carried on. What kept me grounded in the final was having my friend Pritti there with me as a model.’
She added: ‘The atmosphere was more tense in the first day of the final, by the second day the nerves were still there but I think that was because it was our final challenge.
‘It was that sense of knowing it would be our last ever challenge ever together, and as we were nearing the end strangely it did become quite calm.’
The Great British Sewing Bee is available to watch on BBCiPlayer.
