Entering a Quilt Show

When last I wrote I was working on finishing a couple of quilts, in hopes of entering them in the Modern Quilt Guild’s QuiltCon show. Oh, I just checked, and I didn’t mention that I was planning on entering them. I seldom enter quilt shows, for several reasons. First and foremost is because I am not organized enough to plan ahead for deadlines. Secondly, they are expensive to enter! And third, I don’t actually agree with how some quilt shows seem to be judged. Rather than looking at the quilt as a whole artistic piece, the quilts are sometimes eliminated for technical details, like a less-than-perfect binding. (don’t kill me for this statement–its commonly written about by judges and entrants alike.) I used to show dogs, and sometimes the same thing would happen. Dogs were eliminated for certain small faults, and so in the end sometimes a common-looking dog would win, and the most beautiful outstanding dogs would be dismissed from the ring. So, the fourth reason I don’t enter is because I know that my quilts have some of these common technical “faults,” and I am unwilling or unable to change those things.

Back to the Modern Quilt Guild. It is having Quilt Con here in my state next February. I was quite excited about this, and joined so that I could have a chance to get into some of the classes, and I decided to splurge and plan to spend all four days at the show. So then I thought about trying to enter a few of my quilts. I’m not sure if they are modern, but I know that they are different, and I would like to share them with other people.

The deadline was November 30, and right on time, there I was on November 30, filling out the online entry forms, and taking pictures of my quilts with the right amount of pixels per side. In the end I entered six quilts. I told my BF that it was my version of playing the lottery. Maybe if I entered more, one would make it? Most of me knows that there is very little chance that they will make it into the show. The other part of me actually enjoys my own work and knows that it is worth being seen by other people.

Here are the last two that I showed you almost finished, and that I entered. The other four you have already seen elsewhere on the blog.

His Kingdom Will Never End

And close-ups:

A Closer Look

And close-ups:

(Both of these quilts were made with Cherrywood fabrics. All I had was their bags of 8X10 pieces, I think they call them Grab Bags for Crazies.)

One thing I do enjoy doing is exhibiting my quilts at various churches. My hope is that people will see words of Scripture in a new and different way and that that will make them stop and think about the meaning. Lately I have been displaying some of my quilts at my own church. Here’s a view of that:

After getting all those quilts entered on November 30, I followed my plan to “switch gears,” and I have been working on my rug hooking since then. I’ll write about that later in the week.