The Passion of Quilters - and a movie that will stir them.....

I have just taken an hour to view Stitch: The Film available for free today and tomorrow by clicking on https://www.thequiltshow.com/  It is a peek into the lives of 3 quilters as they go through the process of making and entering quilts for the Houston quilt festival. (You will need to create a user id, if you don't already have one, but there is no credit card required to sign up.)

It does a good job of capturing the tension between art quilters verses traditional quilters. I also think it gives some good insight into the judging process. At first I was going to turn the movie off, because I thought it was going to be solely about Art Quilt(er)s. I stuck with it though, because I have an interest in entering judged shows and wanted to learn more about that whole process.

I find it interesting that the judging process for this huge show was not much different from what I observed at my local county fair last year. I happened to be standing there when the judges were judging quilts and observed their process. There were three judges, one was very vocal with her opinions and the other two tended to follow the first opinion spoken. In my little county fair, this was the entire decision. At Houston, this critical first round of judging and vocal opinion, determines whether you quilt even gets hung at the festival. I think this is a flaw in the process and that it should be a silent step as well.

I know there is a lot of passion in the quilting community regarding traditional verses art quilts. I also know there is a lot of passion surrounding the show/judging process. With so much passion invested in our quilts, why wouldn't we be passionate about how this object of our passion is perceived/accepted?!

Just my two cents, what do you think?