Muttons & Buttons & Pearls, Oh My! by Janet Stone.
'Wait a minute,' you say. 'Didn't I see this quilt before?'
Yep, it was one of the lesser winners at AQS' Daytona Week Show.
The Best of Show winner at Daytona, Sherry Reynolds, took Best Stationary Machine Workmanship award at Paducah for her quilt, Eternal Beauty:
Best Hand Workmanship went to Reminisce by Mariko Takeda:
Andrea Brokenshire's beautiful Dance of the Twirly Girls received high praise in both places (and a higher award, Best Wall Quilt, in Paducah):
All this is a helpful reminder that when quiltmakers lavish time, energy and materials on a piece, they tend to enter it in competition at several national festivals -- not just one. But since the judges are different for each venue, they often make different choices. You judge based on what's offered at that particular venue -- not on what else is out there. As a national judge myself, I actually find this "mixing up the waterfall of greatness" refreshing. You never know what (or who) is going to surface.
Show quilts are so beautifully made, generally, that it IS difficult to pick out 'the best' from a lineup of truly great pieces. Here's an excellent example of that struggle -- Sharon Schlotzhauer took an honorable mention for her Ghost Town of St. Elmo small quilt.
But I have seen and examined this piece -- and it is amazing.
I especially liked Brigitte Villaneuve's Race to the Summit, too. It won Donna Wilder's judging award.
Quilttv, the AQS channel on Youtube, features interviews with the prizewinners, as well as the techniques they used, hosted by Bonnie Browning, one of the great ones in today's quilting world.
Go here for the full list of Paducah prizewinners... Congratulations!
2 comments:
Missing Paducah this year, but interested to see the winning quilts. Always tricky for show goers to see the winners and have their own opinion, but don't know what happens on judging day and what else is in that category.
You're right, Jude -- but every judging day I've ever participated in has been different. So it's tough to make 'general' rules that you argue should be followed, except the critical ones: workmanship, relevance and graphic appearance. And even in my part of Colorado, some judges ignore the graphic part. It could be boring as all getout -- but if it's well-made, that's all that counts.
So what do you do...
Thanks much for writing. Remember when we went and looked at the Best of Show quilt last year?
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