Originally Posted by Hinterland
As for what you should focus on, just make the best quilt that you can, that makes you happy. If the judges happen to like, so much the better. When you get it back from the show, look at the comments - hopefully they'll show you some way to make your next quilt better, and tell you what you've done right. Janet
Really, you can't do more than that.
Sharon Schamber, she of a gazillion Best of Show ribbons, made a really interesting comment on one of her videos (binding?).
She said that at the big shows - like Houston/Paducah/Japan - the top quilts are all pretty much equal - especially from an artistic/visual perspective, and that the winner is sometimes then decided on something like the binding or the back.
I don't know what show you're talking about, or what the competition was, but it's really possible that as fantastic as that quilt was, maybe the binding sucked...or the back wasn't as clean as the judges thought it should be, even though you thought it was the best quilt there.
If your local guild has an annual show, you should volunteer to help with the judging. It was one of my most interesting quilt experiences when I did it for my guild years ago. All I was doing was holding the quilts for the judges to inspect, standing with my mouth zipped shut, but ears wide open. And it was fascinating to hear the comments they made.
And the same thing happened - fabulous looking quilt, but the binding wasn't great, nor was the quilt perfectly square.
So even though most don't make quilts for a show, myself included, I have to say that was an influence on really learning to do a great binding, making sure my quilts were square and making sure the back is pristine.