"It takes ages to finish a quilt you're not working on!"

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Whittlesea Show

Out of my five entries into the Show this year, I scored a third prize for one item - the Owls wall hanging. I felt sorry for the lady who had done an almost identical Owls wall hanging to mine, but didn't get a prize. (You can see the corner of hers at the top left corner of this photo). Possibly because I'd put more work into mine with beads and trapunto. I was happy with third prize, but Ken was disappointed. When we visited the show today and were looking at the Homecrafts Pavilion, he looked at the quilts next to my Iris quilt and demanded to know why they got prizes and I didn't! I explained to him that the quilt (below)was placed probably because of the amount of beautiful hand stitching on it which would have take a long time. Whereas mine is mostly machine done in a couple of weeks. I don't think he understood, but I'm sure my blog readers will!
On a negative note, I was quite disgusted with the way the smaller entries were displayed in the show cases. I know they have limited room, but with a bit of effort they could have been much tidier. One of our Guild members had entered some of her work in a show for the first time, and she phoned me last night after visiting the show, to say although she saw the tag saying one of her patchworks had won a prize, it was lying underneath a whole lot of other things and couldn't be seen. I looked in vain for it today, and couldn't find it at all! There was no excuse for this - she'd put a hanging rod sleeve on the back, and there was a rod and wire to hang it up. My "Pantry" wall hanging below wasn't hung either even though there is a rod sleeve on the back. It was just shoved into the display case with other items on top of it, included other people's prize cards. Unless you could read the cards, you would never know who won and what they'd won it for. The same with my Churn Dash patchwork block: And my Suffolk Puffs flowers. It wasn't just my work that was treated like this; this afternoon I expressed my opinion to the stewards who were bringing the items to the front to be picked up. They didn't say anything. It has never been that bad before, so maybe they have new volunteers setting the show up, and they need to be trained a bit better. We'll see what happens at Lilydale in two weeks time. I've always found the Lilydale show to be better set out than Whittlesea, and if they are as good as ever, I shall compliment them!

8 comments:

Jane said...

It is disappointing to put that much work into something and not be able to see it. Half the pleasure of these things is to see close up what people have done
Congratulations on your third place

Doreen G said...

What a mish mash Gina-and next year they will wonder why the entries are down.
Congrats on your third prize.

Yesteryear Embroideries said...

Congratulations on the win on your pretty owls............it would be so hard for me to be a judge because everyone works hard on their piece. Blessings,Kathleen

Annie said...

Congrats on your prize! Your owl is just the cutest.

That display is really unfortunate. Those pieces deserved much better!

Aussie Stitcher said...

Congratulations on the prize Gina. How lovely of Ken to defend your work. What a shame about the way they were displayed.

Julia said...

Congrats Gina...it's a shame they weren't displayed better...I would have been dissapointed too..
Good on you for speaking up, next year they will have to do better,
Julia ♥

Lakshmi said...

congrats on prize Gina..you deserve many more prizes for all the effort and interest you put on your works

shirley said...

Firstly congratulations that was exciting but I am sure most deserved.

Maybe the volunteers come from the sort of people who do not do any sort of needlework or value the amount of work that goes into the needlecrafts.

It is a shame, because it would turn people off entering their work.