Different points of view

First the weather.  We had a bit of a snow storm in our area yesterday. A teeny bit of a storm compared to what other parts of Canada and the US are getting. It was funny though as I left work yesterday to NO snow on the ground and when I arrived home about 40 KM away, driveways had to be shoveled. Very weird weather. I was all set to have a snow day at home today, but hardly any additional snow fell during the night and I was anxious to get to work. It's quiet in the office this week (March break) and it's a great opportunity to get a lot of planning done.

So what to write about today?  I've been linking up with various people's blogs and their recap of QuiltCon (all were positive), however this morning I stumbled upon the "other" side of QuiltCon. Now we all know that while anyone can enter a quilt into a show, only a select few get accepted. That has been the same for any of the major shows. They only have so much space and so a team of jurors will review slides/photos and accept the amount that they have budgeted for in a quilt show.  YES - budgets are important as it costs huge amounts of money to host a quilt show and there are only so many spots for quilts to hang.

I heard that there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 entries into QuiltCon and about 300 got accepted.  Those are NOT exact numbers - but it's something like that.

I haven't really been involved in this jury/judging process, having only once been an aide in the judging process for a major show. So I don't have a lot of experience. But it's true that sometimes a quilt that gets rejected in one show, will get accepted into another. Where one quilt will win an award, it may not get anything at the next show.

Part of that is because the judging process is very subjective and depends on the talents/skills/knowledge of the judges and is also depends on what the competition is. I mean what other quilts have been entered into that show.

I had heard about the Quiltcon rejects, but didn't bother to check it out until this morning.  OH BOY.  Some of the quilts are beautiful and some of them not so much. Some you can see why they didn't get in and others, well - you wonder.  BUT the comments that also made it onto the page -  I'm shocked at some of the hateful comments that people wrote.  If you can't go to the show or your quilt didn't get in, why do people go ballistic.

But it brings up a very good point. We're in the process of winding down the year for the local guilds. You know what that means. Yep - we're looking for vounteers to take over the positions that will become vacant as people (other volunteers) fulfill their two-year commitments.  Many people don't want to put themselves forward.  Why?  They may have done their turn for years, they may not be as mobile as they once were. But seriously - I think the big reason is that they don't want to put themselves in a position of vulnerability.  YES - do you know that whatever position I've been in - leader of a sewing group, organzer of an event, teacher in a classroom.  The negative comments I've gotten is UNBELIEVABLE.   Don't get me wrong   - the positive FAR outweigh the negative.  But even after all these years, those comments/actions by others still hurt.

I know there are some who have felt that I was the giver of criticism or that I was out to make them look bad. That has never been my intention and usually is the result of simple miscommunication. Those situations have been few and far between and I try to patch things up - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But the blatant outright hatred in some of those Quiltcon reject comments - well I'm shocked. I personally know the organizers and they must be devastated to be the receiver of such hate mail. But I've also learned that there are those who seem to take pride in criticizing others, I guess they would be classified as a bully.  

WOW ---  I do live in a naive little world for sure.

Why can't we all get along?

On that note, I'm out of here.

Ciao!!!!


PS ---   If you don't want to read the comments, don't, but looking at the quilts is real eye candy for sure!!!!