Lynn in Wollongong wrote: .... I did a Christening gown with my handmade torchon attached with a machine and then had the audacity to do machine embroidery on the gown. I didn't put it in a competition because I was told it wasn't traditional and that it wouldn't "comply" - do I care - nope - I just don't enter competitions. I make lace for me and those I love. ....
Hi, all, Hmmm. Sewing machines have been around for 150+ years, about, what, 6-7 generations? When does using them become "traditional?" As far as I can tell from looking at mid-19th-century examples, mixing hand and machine techniques has been done by all textile workers, ever since machines were invented. Hand-crafters have been using all and every technique available to them, before and after the industrial revolution. Now, I have no way of knowing if most of the laces and embroideries I've seen were ever entered into any kind of competition(s), or how they placed if they were. But machine finishing techniques have been used on hand-worked items for a long, long time. In many shows and competitions, it's often hard enough to get enough lace entries to constitute a whole category, never mind a new and separate one, but embroidery categories usually have plenty of entrants. Maybe the solution is to have a category defined as "traditional, all hand worked," and allow machine-embellished work in the slightly more general sections. There is and should be a place for all the older hand-work skills, and those of us who enjoy using or trying them should have anyone else's opportunities to put them out there for recognition. There is a place, however, for revised techniques and alternate solutions, too! I have no real problem with excluding machine-embellished items, *as long as that is stipulated in the rules* -- especially if there IS a place for machine-finished hand-made works elsewhere. I do have a problem with assumptions being made that potential entrants don't pick up from reading the entry rules (or policy-and-standards documents), but have to investigate (or be told) in order to find out. I have a BIG problem with inconsistency, especially within one or some of individual judges' own standards. Do judges of hand-embroidered items mark the piece down if it has machine-made lace on it? How about machine lace applied by hand, and machine lace applied by machine? Some competitions allow a great deal of leeway to the judges, who too often allow unquestioned assumptions to support their judgement. There is frequently no way for an entrant to know what those assumptions are before entering! Before allowing this to happen, competition organizers really need to state their standards publicly, clearly, and well in advance of the entry date -- even if they have to get the judges themselves to set them down in writing (such as in state fairs and the like, where the organizers want competitions in areas of which they themselves aren't knowledgeable). Lynn, was there a clause in the rules that said that this category only allowed hand-embroidered, or hand-sewn, or machine-sewn-but-hand-finished entries? Just out of curiosity, what was the competition for? Christening gowns, or hand-made lace, or traditional French sewing,...? I suspect we all suffer from the rarity of our products, and amongst some judges a sort of "tyranny of the exquisite" kicks in: this stuff is, automatically, so-o-o beautiful for being hand-made, that *all* of it is now supposed to conform to some exquisitely "high" standard of excellence, and *only* that "high" standard, whether the maker wants it so or not. The bottom line is, people need to question their own assumptions before judging someone else's work. There is a big difference between "I really love seeing the works that are all hand-made, every stitch!" and, "It's so obvious: people entering this competition should already know that only hand-made is suitable, we shouldn't have to tell them *everything.*" The rules should be nit-pickingly clear, and publicly stated. Then the burden is on the entrants to read the rules correctly, which is only fair! Cheers! Beth Schoenberg --- in beautiful downtown Kambah, Canberra, where the recent warm spring rains have finally allowed my privacy shrubs to re-grow enough leaves to actually do their job again. - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
