Forewarned is forearmed

About the only benefit of living so far from QuiltCon was that if you entered a quilt in the show, you were always going to get your critique back much later than the vast majority of the entrants.

Mine arrived today.

I had already read on other blogs about the style of judging the quilts and if I'm honest, was steeling myself for what they would say about mine.

I even started to wonder if maybe knitting was going to be a less confrontational hobby.

In my case I did get an even spread of good and bad but not what I was expecting and by the end of it I was left scratching my head.

Under 'areas for improvement' it says the quilt has:

• an ineffective use of colo(u)r - swirl takes away - whoops, misjudged the colour bit then as that was the bit I really liked and I have no chuffin idea what 'swirl takes away' means
• an ineffective use of contrast/value - huh, come again?
• the design detracts from the fabric choices - now you've completely lost me
• quilting thread choice is distracting - how can monofilament thread be distracting? And on the back where I didn't use monofilament, it was just one piece of plain fabric
• the quilt would benefit from less hand-quilting - I inner outlined the snaking shape with one row of hand-quilting, clearly that was one inner line too much then

And the comment to end all comments?

'Background is the most interesting part'

While I think the judges went about their roles with the absolute best of intentions I think they need to rethink how they do this in subsequent years.

Our quilts were not 'critiqued': the form that arrived today summed it all up with its words in the top right hand corner - 'Judging Checklist.' With this format, I think they were hidebound by the predetermined rights and wrongs they worked to. It is all too easy to stand in front of a quilt, put some ticks in some boxes, scribble a few additional comments and then move on to the next quilt.

I am incredibly honoured to have had a quilt accepted to QuiltCon.

I loved seeing all the pictures popping up everywhere.

I was thrilled to bits when it sold.

Would I enter a quilt again?

Yeah, why not, it wasn't that bad.

But next time I would like to see the following:

• Judges with a solid quilting background and preferably with a track record of quilt show judging under their proverbial belts
• Ideally more than two judges so that when subjectivity comes into play, personal thoughts will be more evenly spread
• The 'judging check-list' ditched for a more expansive explanation (personal and applicable to each quilt) of the not so good bits as well as the positives. The amount of extra time that may incur wouldn't even come close to the amount of hours, thoughts and feelings I poured into making the quilt
• One of those nice 'My quilt is in the show' rosette thingies sent to those of us that are not there in person please
• Oh and while I'm at it, one of the goodie bags that those who attended got as it takes a lot of bottle (well it did on my part) to show a quilt, so if we do get a rather fulsome sh*t sandwich, it will soften the blow somewhat :-)

Thank you.