Originally Posted by kwhite
I didn't know anyone had replied to this. Somehow I missed it all. Thank you. I entered my first quilt into a show back in the eraly 90's. I won Honorable Mention. This upset me terrible because the place winners had IMO really bad errors that mine didn't. Morover there was no reason on the judges card. I still have no idea why my quilt didn't do better.
Another thing I noticed and don't like is the "best" quilts are shipped from show to show all around and are judged and take top prises in show after show. I disagree with this. If you enter a show and win a prize you should not be able to enter it into any other shows. Leave some prizes for the rest of us. Just my opinion. What do you think?
I don't know how quilt showing works, but in the horse show world you have classes for amateurs and open classes. It varies from one breed registery to another but for the most part, if you make money from training horses or have won a certain amount of blue ribbons you cannot enter in the amateur classes. This keeps the playing field somewhat fair but you still get what we call "professional amateurs". Those who have all the money in the world to send their horse off to a big name trainer and keep it there all year and only get on to ride in the amateur class. Kinda hard for us backyard horse owners to compete against that. :) Anyways, seems like they would have something like that for quilt shows. Once a quilt has won a certain amount of ribbons, it would no longer be eligible for a certain class level. But I guess if a person has made something so fabulous that it wins everywhere it goes, they deserve to show it as much as they want to. *shrug* Horse showing has taught me that nothing can ever be totally fair to everyone involved. Having fun is what matters. :)