Saturday, May 23, 2009

Quilt Show Judging

There is a local quilt show coming up in June, held by the Eastern Long Island Quilters' Guild. This is their 28th annual show and I am sure it will be great fun with lots of beautiful quilts and lots of raffles, gifts and talent.
My question is....How in the world does one JUDGE a quilt show today? It used to be so easy...the quilt was either stitched by hand, or by machine. Of course, there were catagories, but judging had to have been simpler than now. There are still quilts strictly done by hand. But...now the Machine quilts could have been done on a common sewing machine in or on a table, and then finished with this same machine, or the quilter moved over to her amateur quilting rack. Or, the quilt may have been created on a commercial machine and finished on a very commercial frame. Or, the machine quilter may have pieced the quilt, then sent it out to a professional to have it quilted, then put the binding on themselves. Or, they could have hired the commercial person to even put the binding on the quilt. Now, how does a judge break all this down to come up with a winner in the Machine quilting category???