"The Sampler of My Life": over to our jurors

We had already told you, in our latest post that we would talk again about the awards of our contest "The Sampler of My Life" and, to be true, a lot of you have been asking us to see from close the pictures of the other winning samplers, too :-)
So, here are the pictures of our "silver and bronze", besides that of the very personal sampler, which our jury has decided to award with the surprise prize reserved to the "most original" piece of needlework joining our contest :-)

We have already told you about our winners, but there's still something very important, we'd like to share with you, before closing forever this contest of ours: and that's the constitutive element of the decision made by Afke Wullink Semplonius and Maria Concetta Ronchetti, i.e. the grounds for their decision, those that - after three long days thinking - led them to award the sampler we've just showed you lately :-)
And this is why we have thought it fair to publish, here following, their own words, used to explained their reasons:

"First of all, let us thank, from the bottom of our hearts, all the stitchers who have joined this contest!!

The first prize goes to Alice Chiereghin, for she has perfectly targeted the key element of this contest: this sampler is a personal reflection of the area where she lives and it's very original. It must have been a tremendous effort to stitch all the specific details of the Po Delta on one piece of linen fabric. Also the presentation has been very well looked after. We appreciate her sampler not only for its originality, fully designed and charted by Alice herself, but also because it represents the essence of the contest itself: that's the sampler of her life. The whole context is very well balanced, too, as well as the background fabric.

Roberta Casucci deserves our silver for several reasons: the upper and the lower parts of her sampler express a lot of quietness and peace, together with their one-color name, year, and alphabets. In that's actually a nice framing of the sampler on itself already. Moreover, because of its beautiful landscape underneath, this sampler features a good and solid basis. Also, all the motifs used are very well expressed, because of the use of the colors on the background, and enriched with very nice details. Last but not least, we like this sampler because it portraits both the stitcher's and the designer's life in a single chart: definitely a special coincidence! It must be also underlined that the colors chosen to stitch it create a perfect contrast with the background, though in full, wonderful harmony.

The sampler by Francesca Chiti is winning the bronze, for it's definitely a very personal piece of needlework. In this instance, size doesn't matter at all for the judgement. All the patterns on this fabric are related to the stitcher herself, to her life and passions. Also her personal "logo" that she has used (the little owl carrying a needle in her wing/hand) is very original. Besides that, the colors are also all perfect to the background (i.e. the flax). This little, but highly meaningful sampler has immediately drawn our attention, for its capability in representing the stitcher's life and passions with a number of little details, while highlighting, at the same time, that dimensions are not important, but the heart and communicative strength of the participant are!

And last but not least, the unique "Alice in Wonderland" fully conceived and stitched with a mixture of techniques by Elisa Delfino, could not but strike us for the beauty of the different materials used, as well as for the absolute originality showed in "distancing itself" from tradition! We do hope this is going to have a "sequel", for this particular "Alice in Wonderland" shows such a new and personal creative strength!".

So, now you know what's all about! And the all of us, here at Casa Cenina, really would like the message behind this contest to get to you once more, even clearer: that means, you don't necessarily need to be a "master of embroidery technique", to join a contest and hope to be among its winners! Your heart and the passion you're putting in it count: and just because they're both going to enhance your technical skill and perfection, if you have already reached that level; but - just as like - they're going to highlight your will to pursue them, if you still have "to cross this line" ;-) And, in this case, winning one of our prizes, would have been a nice "push" towards that line, wouldn't it ??!?!? ;-)

Hugs and hear from us soon :-)