Judgy McJudgison

Or Judgy McJudgeFace or something like that.​ Yep that's me this week - not that I'm judging anyone just that I did judge. Quilts that is, not people. Let's start again.

Remember that time I judged the Sydney Quilt Show a few weeks ago? Yeah me too. I have judged smaller shows and contests before, and I've done a judging course, so this wasn't all new, but judging such a large show was most definitely a new experience. We had (I think I have this number correct) 389 quilts to pass under our noses, and some of them passed several times as they were entered for different awards, or had progressed through the system to be eligible for special awards. I'll backtrack though and give you a little but of insight into how the judging of so many different quilts, in a show with so many diverse categories is run. I have included a few of my favourites from the show at the end of the post, but I haven't loaded this with quilt pics - every single quilt that won a prize can be seen at the QuiltNSW Instagram account or Facebook page - and I know they're all there because I also do the social media and I spent two whole days putting them there myself :D Pop over and have a look at them because there's some real beauties!

The judging is held over two days, at a school in Sydney's west. It's a great spot because we use the drama department of the school, which means we have the stage area to use for the actual organization of the quilts, and then the big foyer to use for the actual judging process. As you can imagine, 389 quilts is a lot of space, and it's also a lot of man handling and folding and making sure everything goes neatly back in the right place every time it's opened up and folded away again. I asked Kaye for permission to take a few pics and a little bit of video, but the judging process is fairly opaque at all shows (and for good reason) so I wasn't allowed to photograph the quilts while we were looking at them. Every show has a different process, this is just how we do it at this particular show. Also if you wonder why I am referring to QuiltNSW as "we" as we go through this post, its because I'm on the Executive Committee of QuiltNSW, and the Show Committee of the Sydney Quilt Show, so I was a judge but also worked all year to put the show and the prizes themselves together, did the social media afterwards AND had a stand at the show. Which is why my Smites posts have been a bit all over the place in terms of timing over the past few months!! Not to mention that we've been launching a new business! Can I have a nap now?

Every quilt is in a clear plastic bag, and every bag has the quilter's name, the quilt's name, and it's number and category on the outside. The staging area has all the quilts organised into piles by category. If after the quilt has been judged once it has progressed, it is then moved to the next pile it's eligible for, and that's recorded so that the volunteers all know where it is at any given time. The quilts that win prizes go to be photographed as they are judged. Although the bags have names on them, the judges never see the bags because the show is judged blind. That way we don't know who made each quilt (more about that later). 

It's quite an operation, and its run like clockwork by our spectacular President, Kaye Jamieson, her wunderkind sidekick Donna (omg Donna does the whole quilt show layout - we literally could not live without her!) and a team of absolutely awesome volunteers who bring all the quilts to the school, and give up two days of their time to make everything work. I've worked at the judging before but I've obviously never been a judge, so it was actually amazing to be the one who everything was presented to - every time we finished a category, we would turn around and the next one had magically appeared behind us, ready to go. It made a massive task seem easy.

The Sydney Quilt Show has three judges. They always try to get judges who are different in their own styles and genres - this year we had Judy Hooworth, an art quilter who has exhibited widely both in Australia and overseas, over around 40 years! She has won many awards and has judged the NSW show before. I have known Judy for quite a long time and I knew we would get along to judge together pretty well, but I was nervous about the other judge as I didn't know her or anything about her - not nervous about meeting her, just that we would all three clash over decisions and the process would be tricky. 

I need not have worried, Rhonda Pearce is absolutely delightful and we all got along like a house on fire. Rhonda was the owner of Post Office Patchwork in the past, and has won many international quilting awards. Rhonda is a more traditional quilter, so between the art quilter and the more contemporary one, she rounded the panel out very nicely. (You can find Judy on Instagram @judyhooworth1 and Rhonda is @rhondapearcedesigns - check them out!).

The night before judging we all met with the President and Donna to have dinner and a briefing about the process and how the two days would run. It broke the ice for the three of us too, and we had the chance to ask questions and organise our heads a bit before the day began. Next morning, Kaye briefed all the volunteers and we got underway.

The foyer is laid out with lots of big folding tables pushed together in groups. Each category is laid onto the tables, flat and face up, in a big pile, with all the bottom edges together at the bottom edge of the table. The judges stand at the end of the table, and a volunteer at each side flips the corners of the quilts back one by one (fairly slowly so that we can see and absorb each one, but with no comment), so that we had a good look at each quilt before we actually started the process of elimination. All the quilts are then flipped back flat, and we work from the top quilt down to say either "keep" or "release". The released quilts go back to the staging area and into their bags immediately, some are moved to the next category they have been entered into, and some are set aside as having had their journey ended.

The quilts we "kept" are then re-piled up, and examined more closely. For the general prize categories, the number of entrants in each category determines the number of prizes - for example if there are only 10 quilts entered in a particular category, we might only award First, Second and one Judges Choice. If there are 40 quilts in the category we might go down to Fourth, with two or three JCs. 

Sometimes it's easy to know which quilts are released straight away after the first flip through. Depending on the category, they might be more instantly seen as simpler than some of the other entries, or less well pieced, or well quilted, and those can be released straight away. Some quilts instantly stand out as exceptional, but that can make it even harder sometimes because when you have lots in one category that are wonderful, deciding which is first, second etc can be a real puzzle. That's when we get down to looking very, very closely. We can ask for the quilts to be turned over to the back, held up so that we can see them hanging, and folded to check for squareness and rippling.

I know that it's often perceived that quilt show judges were "too picky" or didn't make the right decision - "they should have given THAT a prize!" - but sometimes you need to know what else was in a particular category to understand why one thing got a prize over another. Sometimes we agonised over three quilts, knowing we could only award two prizes - and then it has to come down to the nitty gritty. Whose piecing was perfect, which hand quilting stitches were even, what the back of the machine quilting was like. We fold the corners over to make sure the quilts are square, and check the bindings are full and the corners are neat and pointy, with the fold stitched down. We looked closely at appliqué stitches, checked into V points. We had the stories of the quilts read, and evaluated wether things were from a pattern, or were an original design. Obviously all these things don't apply to every category, but there were times when they ALL applied and needed to be taken into consideration. In short, its not only about how the quilt is to look at, sometimes its about the craftsmanship, the use of colour, the quilting, the AMOUNT of quilting, that made one quilt stand out over another to be awarded a prize.

We started out with the Junior categories, because those quilts are only eligible for the Juniors and nothing else. It's hard to pick winners for the Juniors because you want them all to win, but QuiltNSW sends every Junior entrant a certificate so that made me feel a bit better :) We the moved on through the general categories like Best Appliqué (Amateur and Professional categories), Best Pieced etc. In this show, there are some categories that are ONLY judged on the quilt top, and not the quilting - Best Quilt Top Quilted by Another we look only at the actual top itself and wether the quilting suits the quilt, not on the quality of the quilting itself. Then there are the quilting categories, both hand and machine, that are judged ONLY on the quilting quality and wether it suits the top, and not on the top itself. The Special Awards include things like Best Use of Colour, Best HandMade (in which every stitch has to have been done by hand), the Amateur Encouragement Award, Best Modern Quilt etc. And then Best of Show. 

Best of Show can only be chosen from the pool of quilts that have been first in their category, or selected for a special award. The judges sit, and each quilt is walked slowly past us upright, and then they are laid flat on tables again. By then, we knew these quilts pretty well as they had all been judged and examined closely in at least one other category. We came down fairly easily to three quilts, and then we pondered and talked for a long time! It's a big thing to win Best of Show, especially in a big show like the Sydney show, and you want to get it right. 

Judy, Rhonda and I pretty much agreed on every single quilt - I don't think there was anything that we didn't think should have won a prize, and we were all able to give each good reasons for our thoughts on each quilt we debated over. I can imagine the process could get quite heated if there were strong differing opinions but luckily we didn't have that problem at all. We were all interested in judging quilts on the same things too - yes they had to be beautiful and engaging to look at, but they also had to be well balanced, well constructed, and well quilted.

This has turned into quite a long post so I think I'll continue on Wednesday... I wanted to talk about the blind judging some more, and about QuiltNSW's policy of asking makers not to put the quilts they have entered in the show on social media until after the judging has taken place. There's a lot of heated opinions about that and so I've love to hear what you think too before I give my opinion!! And if you have more questions about the judging process itself and what I've described above, feel free to ask in the comments. See you on Wednesday Smites - and make sure to get over to look at those quilt pics, I'd love to know which ones you liked best. Here are my favourites from the show - I wish you could all have seen them in person, the photos don't do them justice.

Sarah x