Judging categories for this year’s show*

Our entry chair for this show is brand new, so we formed a committee of four people to help her. Lisa Sochacki is entry chair. Barb Bryson (art quilt chair), LuAnn Horstman (show secretary and 2nd chair for judging) and myself (Sue Cortese, judging chair) are the other committee members.

Let’s get started… the categories for this year’s show include two new ones, added by request. Unfortunately, due to continual low entries, the clothing category has been eliminated. Our apologies.

The Usual Categories

Pieced – a quilt made predominantly from machine piecing, hand piecing, paper piecing, English paper piecing or other piecing technique.

Appliqué – a quilt made from predominantly hand appliqué, machine appliqué, reverse appliqué or other appliqué technique.

Mixed – a quilt made from even combination (mix) of appliqué techniques and piecing techniques.

Other – a quilt made from any techniques other than piecing and appliqué, including but not limited to: whole cloth, embroidery, cathedral windows, crazy quilt, puff (biscuit), yo-yo.

As a side note, quilts made from some of these techniques are considered novelty. On the entry form we use the novelty quilt term, so please keep this in mind and don’t confuse quilts made from novelty fabric as novelty quilts — a common misconception.

First Time Entry – regardless of technique, any quilt made by someone who has not entered a quilt in a judged show.

These categories will be further broken down into one-person and two-person categories. For example, there will be a one-person pieced category as well as a two-person pieced category, one-person appliqué and two-person appliqué, etc. This has not changed.

Next, We Have

Miniatures – regardless of technique, a quilt in which all aspects of the design have been reduced in size, and the quilt does not measure more than 24” x 24”. “All aspects” mean any piecing is reduced as well as any appliqués, any quilting designs, binding, embellishments, etc.

Art/Pictorial – regardless of technique, a quilt designed and made by one person to represent a person, place or thing. No commercial patterns. Can be two or more layers. The design should be recognizable but doesn’t need to realistic.

Art/Abstract – regardless of techniques, a quilt designed and made by solely by one person to represent a thought, emotion, or is non-representational. Again, no commercial patterns and can be two or more layers.

Group – regardless of technique, any quilt made by more than two people for all techniques used. So this could include a quilt where one person embroidered blocks, another person assembled the quilt top and a third person quilted it. It would also include quilts made from block exchanges, round robin, bag lady projects or other group projects.

Now, for the Two New Categories

Modern – regardless of technique, a quilt with 2 or more of the following features:

• Large-scale design
• Use of negative space or background
• Simplicity
• Solid colors or large-scale prints
• Improvisational piecing

So let’s talk about what some of this means. An example of a large-scale design is where one entire star fills a queen size quilt, or part of the star fills a queen size quilt. Use negative space means that design pushes the boundary with a proportionally large background but the design remains balanced and
interesting.

Simplistic designs are made from basic shapes and do not have many pieces. I am not sure how to further explain solid colors and large-scale prints. If you don’t get it please ask me in an email or in person, and I will see what I can do.

As far as improvisational piecing, it’s free form piecing; it’s working without a pattern, just randomly stitching and cutting — think crazy quilt type piecing.

Again, a modern quilt should have at least two of these characteristics or features.

Kit Quilts – regardless of technique, any quilt made from pre-packaged store kit, block of the month kits, pre-printed embroidery and floss kit, or kits purchased for a class.

All and/or any of the categories can be further
divided by size; for example, large and small or large, medium and small depending upon the number of quilts entered in the category. The ideal number of quilts per category is around 20. When a category has much more than 20, we look to divide. When a category has less than 10 quilts we typically look to combine it when possible with a related category.

The past entry chairs have tried to make it a fair show for all who enter, and juggling categories can be difficult.

We also ask whether your quilt is hand quilted or machine quilted.

This year’s entry committee doesn’t intend to make any changes to the way hand quilting is handled. If there are enough quilts entered to form a hand-quilting category we will do so, and are willing to combine like categories as it has been done in the past. We would love to see more hand-quilted quilts in the show, so let’s look for ways to improve that number…

• Let’s encourage the timid hand-quilter to enter a quilt (whether big stitch, Sashiko, stab stitch, rocking stitch, or 16 stitches to the inch).
• Let’s develop hand-quilting bees.
• Let’s start teaching hand quilting. 
• Let’s get a hand quilter to speak at guild. 
• Let’s encourage everyone to explore its therapeutic nature!
• Maybe for the next show someone will develop a hand-quilting challenge…

If you are still awake and reading, thank you. Please feel free to ask question of any of the entry committee, or show chair.

Sincerely,
Sue Cortese – scortese7@gmail.com
Lisa Sochacki – lsochacki63@hotmail.com
LuAnn Horstman – sunnylu44@gmail.com
Barb Bryson – sewbzy@gmail.com
Karen Giles – karenscustomquilts@yahoo.com

*The contents of this article are intended for personal use and not intended for re-publishing in it’s entirety or segmented, without prior consent of author, Sue Cortese, especially on social media.