Hello everyone,

I’ve just arrived home, exhausted, after five days in Christchurch helping run The Great New Zealand Quilt Show. I’m the newbie on the committee so this is the first time I’ve been involved in its organisation, but I visited the last two shows in Rotorua.

It’s the first time the show has been held in the South Island, and what a welcome we received. Inevitably a change of venue threw up some challenges but the committee, particularly Valda and Heather – who was the local on the ground – worked hard to ensure the Show ran smoothly.

Two thousand one-hundred and fourteen (2,114) people attended the Show, which surpassed numbers at any held in Rotorua, and we’ve received very positive feedback from attendees. We’ve had comments like “this Show had the best atmosphere of any we have attended” (from a sponsor), “awesome”, “fantastic” and brilliant”.

Our sponsors were so generous, we had a wonderful variety of merchants (we selected them to ensure each had a point of difference), our volunteers were very enthusiastic (we had more people offer to volunteer than we had jobs available), and the venue was amazing. We were also delighted with the number of beautiful quilts donated for the charities we were supporting. But, most importantly, we had a fantastic range of imaginative and technically perfect quilts to show, so thank you to everyone who submitted their work.

Our judges had an unenviable task of selecting category and overall show winners, but there was a good variety of quilts focused on different themes amongst the winners. Cherie Gurney’s innovative and thought-provoking Tic Tac Toe was a well-deserved winner of the Best of Show title.

The quilts from our Regional Groups, and our Winging It and Colours of Spring challenge quilts rounded out the show, and we were also delighted to display 30 Oceans quilts from Carrefour European Patchwork in France.

Unfortunately, one or two things didn’t go as well as we had hoped – as anyone who stood in the café queue will know – but most of these issues were out of our control.

Already the committee has started discussing how we could improve things to make the next Great New Zealand Quilt Show even better than this year’s but, thankfully, we have two years to plan it.

Finally, please remember to get your entries in for the Seasons of Colour – Winter Challenge. Online entries close on Friday 30 May, with quilts needing to arrive with the organiser by Friday 13 June.

Jill Bowman

Cherie Gurney receiving her Best of Show prize from Valda Sutton