Monday Doldrums

Today is the 5th day of the 31 Day Blogging Challenge sponsored by Cheryl Sleboda. Here in Portland, it’s dark, grey, and rainy… and I’m having a hard time finding something fun to write about.

Luckily, I found a great podcast today to listen to. Crafty Planner interviewed my friend Sam Hunter today… and it was a great listen! They talked about art and the quilt world, ageism, about competition amongst quilters, derivatives, health, and about the ability to ask for help when needed.

Their discussion gave me a lot to think about. The idea of self-worth and valuing our art has been on my mind a lot, along with self-care and healing. Especially in regards to the current Modern quilt scene.

For instance, there is a really big quilt show every year called Quiltcon that the MQG sponsors. Every year there are so many entries into this show that only a certain few actually get in. The competition is fierce, and many people are very hurt when their quilts are not accepted into the show. I’ve entered every year and never made the grade, and I have to admit – it made me question my own aesthetic the first few times. However, I do understand the process a bit more than most since I organized shows for our local guild. I know that there is only a certain amount of room or number of quilts that can be accepted… and ALL of them can be awesome! I can understand how my quilts may not be strong enough visually to pop on a page of thumbnails.

Even so, it hurts a bit and I do wish we would get specific feedback on why our quilts are rejected. I asked MQG about it, and the answer is that they receive too many entries to have time to write a single sentence for each quilt rejection. So… since I have no idea what they want to see, and there is no theme – I can only look at my rejected quilts and try to figure out something the jurors might like. Then I catch myself… I don’t want to make a quilt just for a show, and constrain myself to what I hope they want to see! So I decided not to enter this year.

That means yet another year of not getting into Quiltcon – but, at least this time, it’s of my own accord. *self-care-win!*

My plan is to enter my quilts at other shows that have modern categories. I think I’ll have better success at showing my quilts that way, and I won’t have to ‘work the modern scene’ as Sam and Sandi were discussing on the podcast.

I’m hoping to do a little more stitching tonight, but for now I need to do a little more work for the day. I do graphic work and all the bookkeeping for our small screen printing business, and I have a lot to do before the end of the year… but I try to sew a little every day.

And, just because he’s so cute, I’m adding a picture of Kitty Karryall who has been keeping me company today. 🙂