I went last weekend to a local quilt show and I have a question for those of you experienced with quilt competitions. The show is one of the best in this area, I believe they accept up to 400 quilts ranging from contemporary art quilts to very traditional hand pieced and hand quilted pieces.
There was an amazing quilt that had been entered in the show, it was under "Pictorial Quilts". The quilt was of a lighthouse with a shining light that lead to a mariners compass. The lighthouse sat on a break wall and below was water. There was a lot of white background, but it was intricately quilted, and I should add the quilting was PHENOMINAL. Quilted into the white background were anchors, boats, shells, and various other nautical elements intertwined with feathers, vining, intricate diamond cross hatched shapes...there were even tiny quilted swirls and shapes in the blue part of the quilt to look like waves and fish under the water. The top was likely paper pieced and probably not terribly hard to replicate, but the quilting was truly beyond the majority of what was displayed at the show.
To my shock, the quilt didn't win even an honorable mention.
I would really like to enter this show next year, it would be my first ever competition, but after this years show I am baffled as to what they must be judging on. Did this quilt possibly not win anything because it should have been entered into the competition under the quilting category rather than the pictorial category? From what I could tell it was very well made from top to bottom. But again I'm new to shows and there has to be something I'm missing. If it was entered as a pictorial quilt then it had to have been judged, and not just a show quilt.
So to make a long question longer, what should I focus on when creating a quilt that I'd like to enter into a show? LOL* Have you seen quilts in shows that you were surprised to see didn't get any recognition?