Friday, September 11, 2009

Try and Try Again


I have been having a real learning experience the last few days. Last week I jotted a quick email to a friend of mine in the quilting world asking a question about entering juried shows. What followed was numerous emails, some excellent critiquing and me looking at my quilting in a whole new light.

What I didn't know at the time of sending my email, is this person is taking her judging certification for quilting and doesn't mind answering my questions. Well, she says that now... wait till she really gets to know me and sees how many questions I can ask. But for now, I am ecstatic. The craziest part of all this, I have known her for 4 years but never met her, our friendship has developed strictly through email. I know she is a hoot, as her emails make me laugh, and I think she is a little on the wild side.... don't tell her that though. And one of these years, I will get to a quilting convention and just go right up to her and meet her. How fun will that be?

I knew I had lots to learn about entering quilts into competitions, and she started me off with a few major things that I really needed to work on. First was my background choice of the quilt. I have always been so focused on what I was attaching to it, that I always just grabbed a whole piece of cloth. Not anymore.

I have been scouring all my quilting magazines looking at their backgrounds for examples and have been getting quite educated in the process.

Having said all of that, the current project I had planned had to be completely revamped. And that took me 3 days to figure out just the background! I have got it done but may make it bigger. The picture above is the colours of the quilt, I think. And don't worry, I am going to embellish the heck out of it.

This one is really making me think cause I want to try and improve and use her suggestions. And when it is done I want a higher mark than my last one!

No comments: