QuiltNSW - Sydney Quilt Show - I'm a winner!

Wow!! What a crazy few days that was!

Many of you know that I entered my la passacaglia into the QuiltNSW Sydney Quilt Show in Australia.  I was there for the prize giving on Thursday and was totally stunned when I won the top amateur prize!!

Yes, I won the Bernina Amateur Encouragement Award and the prize is a Bernina 215, very kindly donated by Bernina Australia.

Bernina Australia are lovely and they are sending a machine to Nancy's Stitch Studio in Wellington for me to collect.  I didn't want to have to try and bring it home on the plane yesterday.

I also won a Judges Commendation in my category - Pieced Quilt and Hand Quilted (Amateur). That's the blue ribbon pinned on my quilt.

So it was an amazing day which seemed to just fly by after the prize giving.  The congratulations kept flying in on Instagram and Facebook.  If I haven't replied to you personally, please accept my thanks now.

I met so many people who follow my blog, facebook or Instagram at the show! Thank you all for coming up and saying hello.  My friends were laughing that every 10 minutes or so someone would say, "Are you Wendy? You don't know me, but I follow your blog."

The first kind lady approached me on the first morning at 8.55am before the doors even opened to go in, and it continued until I was walking to the exit at 4.30pm closing on my last day.  You're all so kind and it was lovely to meet you all.  Thank you for reading my blog and being interested in what I make. I don't do selfies, but if I did I could post at least 30 selfies here with blog followers I met at the show.

So now my quilt is showing on the QuiltNSW page of winners.  What an honour.  You can click here to see more winning quilts from the show, and I'll post some of my favourites in a separate blog post soon.

If you'd like to know more about how I made my la passacaglia quilt, you kind find all my previous blog post on the tab at the top of the page, or by clicking here.

Final advice:

This success is a story in not giving up. Many of you have told me my quilt is beautiful and it has inspired you to start making your own la passacaglia.  I've also been told many times that I must enter it into a show and let other people see it in real life.

My own guild (Capital Quilters) hasn't had a show since I joined because the hall we would use has been demolished and is being rebuilt due to earthquake risks.

Our national show - Quilt Symposium - is only held every two years, but they require all quilts to be original designs, so I couldn't enter la passacaglia in that show because it's from a pattern by Willyne Hammerstein.

Last year I applied to have my quilt included in the Quiltmania exhibition of 20 la passacaglia quilts at the Houston quilt show in 2016.  My quilt wasn't selected and I was naturally quite sad about that. I would have loved to have had my quilt at Houston, even though it would have been for exhibition only, and not judged.

So then I emailed the Auckland Quilt Guild to see if I could display it at the Auckland Festival of Quilts in November 2016, even though I'm not a member of that guild.  I said it could be for display only, and not judged.  But they came back and said they only allow entries from people who live north of Taupo - and unfortunately I don't.  That's fair enough, it's their guild and they make the rules.

Undeterred by two rejections, I joined QuiltNSW because they allow international memberships, and allow each member to enter two quilts into their show each year.  I'd seen photos from their show in previous years and knew their quilts were beautiful.  I just wanted my quilt to hang in a show and let other people see it in real life. So I joined QuiltNSW a year ago, and entered my first quilt show.  And look at the result!! I won the top amateur award.

So the moral of this story is, don't let a rejection put you off.  If you think your quilt should be in a show, keep trying until you find the right show for you.

Thank you to QuiltNSW and Bernina Australia.