Catch a Falling Star, my quilt pictured above, hung in the Northwest Quilting Expo show in Portland last week (Sept. 24-26). It was a terrific show, with over 650 quilts on display. A friend and I spent the entire day there, walking slowly up and down every aisle, admiring the quilts and enjoying the vendor mall. Really enjoying the vendor mall, if you know what I mean. Someone did not come home empty-handed.
Northwest Quilting Expo is a juried show, and entrants could opt to have their quilts judged, with written comments delivered when the quilts were returned after the show. I decided to do that. These are the comments from the three judges:
“Lovely color palette. Sampler blocks are very well balanced.”
“Exceptional border treatment and frames central panel well.”
“Wonderful selection of quilting motifs.”
Those are very nice comments. I’m not sure what I was expecting — perhaps something about what I could have done better?
I was very pleased to see that last comment because Loretta Orsborn, the longarm quilter who quilted Catch a Falling Star, did such an outstanding job. On the day I took my quilt to her studio, we spent three hours looking at designs and choosing motifs. She expertly combined digitized and free motion quilting. If you’d like to see some close-ups of her work on my quilt, you can check out this earlier post.
Hi my friend,
I totally understand your reaction to the judge’s comments. It is wonderful to get the praise especially since you really “think” about your quilts as you create them and each comment fits your quilt wonderfully. But, on this journey we want to improve and welcome comments that help us think about changes and tweaks that we can do to continue improving.
This is a stunning quilt and you did a remarkable job on all the aspects of the quilt.
Your quilt looked amazing hanging with all the others. Your talent and attention to detail shines thru. Thanks for sharing your talent with the masses.
Peggy
Dawn, I’m going to have my very first “trunk show” in a few weeks…. I’ve been invited by the 5th grade class at a local school 🙂
I agree with the judges. 🙂 I was especially drawn to your border treatment, myself.
Someone said the NQA judge training says for every two (either positive or improve) to add one (of the opposite). And while we look for the “needs improvement” sometimes they seem to have to stretch to make one. Maybe silence is better than fake, stretched observations.
Congratulations! I’m sure many people enjoyed seeing your quilt.
The judges’ comments were fine – so they were wrong not to award you a prize!!!
Congratulations Dawn! Your quilt is beautiful!