Prepare your entry

A phone in daylight is genuinely enough

You do not need a good camera, a studio, or any photography experience. Most entries are photographed on a phone, next to a window, on an ordinary afternoon. If your photo is bright, straight and in focus, you have done the job. Everything below is just detail — read as much or as little as you like.

Light first

Soft, indirect daylight flatters a quilt more than anything else. Hang it on a plain wall or lay it flat on a clean floor near a big window. Avoid direct sun, which washes out colour and casts hard shadows. Shooting at night? Use two matching lamps, one on each side, angled in.

Keep the camera square

Stand directly in front of the middle of the quilt — not above it, below it, or off to one side. You want a rectangle that looks like a rectangle. A tilted camera makes the quilt look lopsided.

Fill the frame

Let the quilt take up most of the picture, with a small, even margin of background around it. Don't cut off the binding or the corners.

Focus and sharpness

Rest your phone on a tripod, a stack of books, or the back of a chair. Tap the screen on the middle of the quilt to focus. Zoom in on the finished photo to check the stitching looks crisp.

Colour accuracy

Shoot near white or grey walls if you can, and switch off warm overhead lights that turn everything orange. If the photo looks too yellow or too blue, nudge the white balance on your phone before uploading.

No identifying marks

Before you press the shutter, look around the frame for labels, watermarks, studio cards, social handles — anything that says who you are. Judges score every quilt without knowing who made it, and that applies to every photo, including extras.

File size and format

JPEG or PNG. Aim for at least 2000 pixels on the shortest side. Smaller files lose the detail judges want to see. If you're not sure, just upload straight from your phone at full size.

Naming your files

No need to rename anything — the system takes care of anonymity. Just drop each photo into the right slot: the whole quilt, a close-up detail, a binding corner, and an optional extra.

Still unsure?

Send what you have. If a photo needs a small fix, we'll email you and you can swap it before entries close. Nobody is disqualified for a first try.

Who can enter

The Design Room Quilt Show is open to individual quilt makers worldwide. You must be 18 or older, or have a parent or guardian submit on your behalf. Entries must be your own original work, completed within the last three years, and not previously entered in this show.

What counts as a quilt

For this show, a quilt is a textile with a top layer, a bottom layer, and a batting middle, held together by stitching that passes through all three layers. Wall hangings, art quilts, wholecloth quilts, pieced quilts, appliqué quilts, improv quilts and mixed-media quilts all qualify as long as they meet this three-layer, through-stitched construction.

The brief: quilts for real rooms

Each edition presents three interior-design rooms. Your quilt must respond to one of those room briefs in size, palette and spirit. A room is not a theme — it is a specific wall, window, floor and mood. Each quilt is entered in exactly one room.

Eligible techniques

Piecing, appliqué, wholecloth, improv, foundation paper piecing, English paper piecing, art quilting and mixed-media quilts are all welcome. Longarm, domestic and hand quilting are equally eligible.

What is not eligible

• Kits where the design is pre-determined by the pattern publisher.
• Work made substantially by someone other than the entrant.
• Items other than quilts: garments, bags and home accessories.
• Entries that identify the maker anywhere visible in the photographs.

Size

Two rules apply together. Show-wide, a quilt must be at least 24″ on its shortest side and no more than 120″ on its longest. Inside that, each room brief states its own size range for the wall or bed it is made for, and your quilt must also fall inside the range for the room you entered. Measure at the longest point in each direction including binding. We allow a 2″ tolerance either way; beyond that the entry is returned for correction before judging.

Entry fee

One fee per quilt: $35. It is the same number wherever you enter from — we simply bill in the currency closest to you, and your bank sets any conversion rate.

What the fee covers:

• Blind review of your quilt by three working interior designers
• A weighted score card returned to you after the reveal — every entrant gets one, not just finalists
• A gallery placement on the public show floor for the full run of the show
• Eligibility for every award: Best in Show, your room, Judge's Choice and People's Choice
• A maker page you can link to, and the option to list the quilt for sale in the marketplace

Refunds, cancellations and disputes

The entry fee is refundable in full, to the original payment method, any time before your entry is submitted for review. Once the panel begins reviewing entries the fee is non-refundable, because the work you paid for — an anonymous professional review — has begun. Three exceptions: if the show is cancelled by us, if we cannot run the round you paid for, or if you were charged twice, we refund in full without being asked. We do not issue credits, vouchers or roll-overs to a future season in place of a refund; every refund is money returned. Lecture tickets are refundable up to 7 days before the session; after that you keep the 14-day replay instead. Refunds are returned in the same currency you were charged, normally within 10 business days.

If something looks wrong with a charge, write to the show desk before opening a bank or PayPal dispute — we can almost always fix it the same day, and a dispute freezes the entry or order while it is open. For decisions rather than money — a moderation call, a disqualification, a marketplace order — reply to the email you received within 14 days and a human reviews it. We answer every appeal in writing. Judging results themselves are final and are not appealable, because the panel scores anonymously and re-scoring after names are known would be unfair to the rest of the field.

Deadline and time zones

Entries close at 11:59 p.m. on March 11, 2027 in your own local time zone. That is the one date on this site that is not Eastern Time: the form stays open until the last local 11:59 p.m. on earth has passed, so nobody is cut off early by a time zone. Every other date and time published by the show is Eastern (America/Toronto).

Every scheduled event — opening night, the awards reveal, lectures, show floor dates — runs on Eastern Time (America/Toronto). The one exception is the entry deadline, which closes at 11:59 p.m. on the closing date in your own local time zone, wherever you are.

Photographs

Judging is from photographs only. Four images: face-on (full quilt, square to camera), detail (quilting and piecing at true scale), binding (a finished corner or edge) and an optional extra. All must be in focus, colour-accurate, unfiltered, and at least 2000 pixels on the shortest side. No borders, text or decorative overlays.

Anonymous judging

Judging is anonymous and we enforce it technically, not on trust. Judges see entry numbers, room, dimensions and photographs — never your name, location, account, social handles or price. Files are renamed on upload and image metadata is stripped, so a filename or EXIF field cannot leak you. Moderators check every photograph for labels, watermarks, studio cards and signatures before it reaches the panel, and an entry that reveals its maker is returned for correction rather than quietly penalised. Names are re-attached only after all scores are locked. Attempting to identify yourself to a judge, or a judge attempting to learn who made an entry, voids the entry or the judge's card for that entry.

Conflicts of interest

Judges declare conflicts before judging begins: their own students and clients, family, business partners, anyone they have taught or been paid by in the last two years, and any quilt they have seen in progress. Because judging is anonymous a conflict usually surfaces mid-round — a judge who recognises a quilt must recuse from that entry immediately and tell the organiser. A recused entry is scored by the remaining judges and its final score is the average of those cards, so no entry is advantaged or penalised by the recusal. Judges may not enter the show, may not accept gifts or payment from entrants, and may not discuss individual entries outside the panel. The organiser does not score and cannot change a judge's card; every recusal and tie-break is logged with the award.

How entries are scored

Round one is a yes / no pass over every single entry — nothing is scored. An entry advances to grading when at least two of the three judges say yes. Nobody is told whether they advanced; there are no public finalist lists, and the field stays whole until the reveal.

Criterion	Weight	What it measures
Fit to the room brief	30%	Does this quilt belong in this environment — palette, scale, mood, style?
Design & visual impact	20%	Composition, colour relationships, originality, presence in a room.
Desirability — would a client buy it?	20%	Would the designer specify this piece for a paying client?
Craftsmanship & construction	15%	Piecing accuracy, seams, flatness, quilting execution.
Finishing & binding	15%	Binding quality, corners, edges, overall finish.

Each criterion is scored 0–10 by each judge and multiplied by its published weight, producing one weighted total out of 100 per judge. Your final score is the average of the three judges' totals, carried to two decimal places. The weights are fixed before entries open and are never changed mid-edition.

Ties

Ties are broken in a fixed, published order, applied one step at a time until the tie is resolved: (1) the higher score on Fit to the room brief; (2) then Design & visual impact; (3) then Craftsmanship & construction; (4) then the higher number of individual judges who ranked the entry first; (5) if still tied, the panel meets on a recorded call and votes, and the organiser publishes the resolution alongside the award. Where the deadlock is between two entries for a cash award and the panel cannot separate them, the prize is split equally rather than awarded arbitrarily. People's Choice ties are broken by whichever entry reached its vote total first.

Prizes

Best in Show is guaranteed and funded before entries open. Room winner, Judge's Choice and People's Choice awards each carry a guaranteed minimum listed on the prize page; anything above that minimum is sponsor-dependent and is added to the prize page — with its stated value — before entries close.

Cash prizes are paid by PayPal within 30 days of the reveal. If PayPal is not available to you, ask us and we will arrange an electronic transfer or a cheque instead. Winners are responsible for any taxes or transfer fees in their own country.

Cash is paid electronically, but physical prizes and sponsor packs are real objects and they do ship. After the reveal we email each winner to confirm the delivery address on their profile; tell us within 14 days if it has changed. Sponsor-supplied prizes ship from the sponsor, show-supplied prizes ship from Canada, and we send you a tracking number as soon as one exists. We pay standard shipping worldwide. Import duties, customs charges, brokerage and local taxes are the winner's responsibility and are not reimbursed — where a prize is high value we will tell you the declared value in advance so there are no surprises. Delivery normally lands inside 30 days in Canada and the U.S. and inside 60 days elsewhere. If a prize cannot legally or practically be shipped to your country, or is lost in transit and cannot be replaced, we substitute a cash equivalent of the stated value, paid the same way as prize money. Nothing is ever shipped to us — you never send your quilt anywhere to be judged.

Selling your quilt

Quilts are sold through the show, not privately. The buyer pays through our checkout and enters a delivery address; we hold the money, keep a 12% commission on the sale price, and release the rest to the maker. Prices are shown and charged in the currency on the listing. Buying is only possible while the show floor is open.

When a quilt sells, the maker's share — the sale price less the 12% show commission — is created as a held payout, not an instant transfer. We send the maker the buyer's shipping address; the maker ships the quilt at their own cost within 7 days and enters the carrier and tracking number on their sales page. Entering tracking releases the payout into the payment queue, and it is paid to the maker's PayPal address within 10 business days. A sale with no tracking after 14 days is refunded to the buyer in full and the payout is cancelled. Makers are responsible for packing, for customs paperwork on international sales, and for declaring the sale income where they live; buyers are responsible for any import duty or local tax. Damage or non-delivery claims must be opened with us within 14 days of the tracking showing delivered, and while a claim is open the payout stays held.

Photographs and your rights

You keep copyright in your quilt and in your photographs. By entering you grant us a non-exclusive licence to display those photographs on this site, on the show floor, in the winners announcements, and in our own marketing for this and future editions — including paid advertising for the show itself. We never license your images to a third party and never sell them. Your name is credited every time an image appears unless judging is still anonymous. The licence has no end date so past editions can stay online, but you may ask us to remove an image at any time by writing to the show desk and we will take it down within 14 days.

Entering from outside Canada and the U.S.

The show is open worldwide, and you never ship your quilt to us — entry, judging and the show floor are all online, from photographs. Physical prizes and marketplace sales do involve shipping; those terms are on the prize page and in the marketplace terms. You are billed CA$35 unless you are in the United States, where you are billed US$35, and your bank does the conversion at its own rate. Prize money is paid to a PayPal account; PayPal reaches over 200 countries, and where it does not we will arrange an electronic transfer instead. We do not withhold tax and we do not issue tax forms — declaring prize income where you live is yours to handle. All entry materials, briefs and judging are in English, and machine-translated entry statements are perfectly welcome. We cannot pay prize money or ship prizes into countries under sanctions that block payment processing or freight; if that affects you, tell us before you enter and we will confirm.

Accessibility and accommodation

Tell us what you need and we will make it work. We can supply room briefs as plain text or large print, read a brief aloud on a call, accept an entry statement by voice note instead of a written form, and help you upload photographs if the form is hard to use. If a disability, illness, bereavement or caregiving makes the deadline impossible, ask before the deadline and we will extend it for you privately — no documentation required. The show floor is keyboard navigable, every image carries alt text, and the awards reveal is captioned. Write to the show desk with the subject 'accommodation' and a person, not a form, answers.

Moderation and what happens next

• Immediately — A confirmation email with your entry number, the room you chose, your four photographs and your receipt.
• Within 3 business days — A human moderates the entry — photographs, size, room fit, and no identifying marks. You get an email either way.
• If something needs fixing — You get the specific reason and a correction window that runs until entries close. Re-upload and resubmit as many times as you need; there is no extra fee and no penalty.
• First Glance closes — Nobody is told whether they advanced. There are no public finalist lists — the field stays whole until the reveal.
• After the reveal — Every entrant — winner or not — receives their score card with the panel's weighted scores and written notes. That is the part most shows never send.

Conduct

We may remove any entry, and any entrant, for harassment, misrepresentation, copyright infringement or behaviour that undermines the fairness of the show. Judging results are final.

General

What is The Design Room Quilt Show?

A virtual, anonymously juried quilt exhibition. Each edition presents three real interior-design rooms. You make a quilt for one of them, submit four photographs, and a panel of interior designers scores it without knowing who made it.

Is it in person or online?

Entirely online. You never ship your quilt to us. The awards reveal and the lecture series run on Zoom.

Who runs it?

TheQuiltHub.com. See who is behind this.

Money

How much does it cost to enter?

One fee per quilt: $35. It is the same number wherever you enter from — we simply bill in the currency closest to you, and your bank sets any conversion rate.

Why two currencies?

The entry fee is a flat $35 per quilt. Prize money, lecture tickets, sponsorships and marketplace prices are labelled at the point they are shown, and you are charged in the currency displayed.

Can I get a refund?

The entry fee is refundable in full, to the original payment method, any time before your entry is submitted for review. Once the panel begins reviewing entries the fee is non-refundable, because the work you paid for — an anonymous professional review — has begun. Three exceptions: if the show is cancelled by us, if we cannot run the round you paid for, or if you were charged twice, we refund in full without being asked. We do not issue credits, vouchers or roll-overs to a future season in place of a refund; every refund is money returned. Lecture tickets are refundable up to 7 days before the session; after that you keep the 14-day replay instead. Refunds are returned in the same currency you were charged, normally within 10 business days.

Something is wrong with my charge.

If something looks wrong with a charge, write to the show desk before opening a bank or PayPal dispute — we can almost always fix it the same day, and a dispute freezes the entry or order while it is open. For decisions rather than money — a moderation call, a disqualification, a marketplace order — reply to the email you received within 14 days and a human reviews it. We answer every appeal in writing. Judging results themselves are final and are not appealable, because the panel scores anonymously and re-scoring after names are known would be unfair to the rest of the field.

Entering

Can I enter more than one quilt?

Yes. Each quilt is a separate entry with its own fee and room choice, and they can go in one checkout.

What size does my quilt need to be?

Two rules apply together. Show-wide, a quilt must be at least 24″ on its shortest side and no more than 120″ on its longest. Inside that, each room brief states its own size range for the wall or bed it is made for, and your quilt must also fall inside the range for the room you entered. Measure at the longest point in each direction including binding. We allow a 2″ tolerance either way; beyond that the entry is returned for correction before judging.

When exactly is the deadline?

Entries close at 11:59 p.m. on March 11, 2027 in your own local time zone. That is the one date on this site that is not Eastern Time: the form stays open until the last local 11:59 p.m. on earth has passed, so nobody is cut off early by a time zone. Every other date and time published by the show is Eastern (America/Toronto).

What happens after I submit?

• Immediately — A confirmation email with your entry number, the room you chose, your four photographs and your receipt.
• Within 3 business days — A human moderates the entry — photographs, size, room fit, and no identifying marks. You get an email either way.
• If something needs fixing — You get the specific reason and a correction window that runs until entries close. Re-upload and resubmit as many times as you need; there is no extra fee and no penalty.
• First Glance closes — Nobody is told whether they advanced. There are no public finalist lists — the field stays whole until the reveal.
• After the reveal — Every entrant — winner or not — receives their score card with the panel's weighted scores and written notes. That is the part most shows never send.

Judging

How is my quilt scored?

Round one is a yes / no pass over every single entry — nothing is scored. An entry advances to grading when at least two of the three judges say yes. Nobody is told whether they advanced; there are no public finalist lists, and the field stays whole until the reveal.

Criterion	Weight	What it measures
Fit to the room brief	30%	Does this quilt belong in this environment — palette, scale, mood, style?
Design & visual impact	20%	Composition, colour relationships, originality, presence in a room.
Desirability — would a client buy it?	20%	Would the designer specify this piece for a paying client?
Craftsmanship & construction	15%	Piecing accuracy, seams, flatness, quilting execution.
Finishing & binding	15%	Binding quality, corners, edges, overall finish.

Each criterion is scored 0–10 by each judge and multiplied by its published weight, producing one weighted total out of 100 per judge. Your final score is the average of the three judges' totals, carried to two decimal places. The weights are fixed before entries open and are never changed mid-edition.

How do you keep judging anonymous?

Judging is anonymous and we enforce it technically, not on trust. Judges see entry numbers, room, dimensions and photographs — never your name, location, account, social handles or price. Files are renamed on upload and image metadata is stripped, so a filename or EXIF field cannot leak you. Moderators check every photograph for labels, watermarks, studio cards and signatures before it reaches the panel, and an entry that reveals its maker is returned for correction rather than quietly penalised. Names are re-attached only after all scores are locked. Attempting to identify yourself to a judge, or a judge attempting to learn who made an entry, voids the entry or the judge's card for that entry.

What if a judge knows the maker?

Judges declare conflicts before judging begins: their own students and clients, family, business partners, anyone they have taught or been paid by in the last two years, and any quilt they have seen in progress. Because judging is anonymous a conflict usually surfaces mid-round — a judge who recognises a quilt must recuse from that entry immediately and tell the organiser. A recused entry is scored by the remaining judges and its final score is the average of those cards, so no entry is advantaged or penalised by the recusal. Judges may not enter the show, may not accept gifts or payment from entrants, and may not discuss individual entries outside the panel. The organiser does not score and cannot change a judge's card; every recusal and tie-break is logged with the award.

What happens in a tie?

Ties are broken in a fixed, published order, applied one step at a time until the tie is resolved: (1) the higher score on Fit to the room brief; (2) then Design & visual impact; (3) then Craftsmanship & construction; (4) then the higher number of individual judges who ranked the entry first; (5) if still tied, the panel meets on a recorded call and votes, and the organiser publishes the resolution alongside the award. Where the deadlock is between two entries for a cash award and the panel cannot separate them, the prize is split equally rather than awarded arbitrarily. People's Choice ties are broken by whichever entry reached its vote total first.

What are the awards?

Best in Show is the single highest final score in the show. Room winner is the highest final score inside each room — three rooms, three room winners. Judge's Choice is one personal pick per judge — three judges, three awards. People's Choice is decided by public vote, one vote per account.

Prizes

How is prize money paid?

Cash prizes are paid by PayPal within 30 days of the reveal. If PayPal is not available to you, ask us and we will arrange an electronic transfer or a cheque instead. Winners are responsible for any taxes or transfer fees in their own country.

Which prizes are confirmed?

Best in Show is guaranteed and funded before entries open. Room winner, Judge's Choice and People's Choice awards each carry a guaranteed minimum listed on the prize page; anything above that minimum is sponsor-dependent and is added to the prize page — with its stated value — before entries close.

How do physical prizes reach me?

Cash is paid electronically, but physical prizes and sponsor packs are real objects and they do ship. After the reveal we email each winner to confirm the delivery address on their profile; tell us within 14 days if it has changed. Sponsor-supplied prizes ship from the sponsor, show-supplied prizes ship from Canada, and we send you a tracking number as soon as one exists. We pay standard shipping worldwide. Import duties, customs charges, brokerage and local taxes are the winner's responsibility and are not reimbursed — where a prize is high value we will tell you the declared value in advance so there are no surprises. Delivery normally lands inside 30 days in Canada and the U.S. and inside 60 days elsewhere. If a prize cannot legally or practically be shipped to your country, or is lost in transit and cannot be replaced, we substitute a cash equivalent of the stated value, paid the same way as prize money. Nothing is ever shipped to us — you never send your quilt anywhere to be judged.

Selling and the marketplace

Can I sell my quilt?

Quilts are sold through the show, not privately. The buyer pays through our checkout and enters a delivery address; we hold the money, keep a 12% commission on the sale price, and release the rest to the maker. Prices are shown and charged in the currency on the listing. Buying is only possible while the show floor is open.

When do I get paid as a seller?

When a quilt sells, the maker's share — the sale price less the 12% show commission — is created as a held payout, not an instant transfer. We send the maker the buyer's shipping address; the maker ships the quilt at their own cost within 7 days and enters the carrier and tracking number on their sales page. Entering tracking releases the payout into the payment queue, and it is paid to the maker's PayPal address within 10 business days. A sale with no tracking after 14 days is refunded to the buyer in full and the payout is cancelled. Makers are responsible for packing, for customs paperwork on international sales, and for declaring the sale income where they live; buyers are responsible for any import duty or local tax. Damage or non-delivery claims must be opened with us within 14 days of the tracking showing delivered, and while a claim is open the payout stays held.

Your rights

Do I keep copyright?

You keep copyright in your quilt and in your photographs. By entering you grant us a non-exclusive licence to display those photographs on this site, on the show floor, in the winners announcements, and in our own marketing for this and future editions — including paid advertising for the show itself. We never license your images to a third party and never sell them. Your name is credited every time an image appears unless judging is still anonymous. The licence has no end date so past editions can stay online, but you may ask us to remove an image at any time by writing to the show desk and we will take it down within 14 days.

What do you do with my personal data?

See the privacy policy and the terms of use.

I am outside Canada and the U.S.

The show is open worldwide, and you never ship your quilt to us — entry, judging and the show floor are all online, from photographs. Physical prizes and marketplace sales do involve shipping; those terms are on the prize page and in the marketplace terms. You are billed CA$35 unless you are in the United States, where you are billed US$35, and your bank does the conversion at its own rate. Prize money is paid to a PayPal account; PayPal reaches over 200 countries, and where it does not we will arrange an electronic transfer instead. We do not withhold tax and we do not issue tax forms — declaring prize income where you live is yours to handle. All entry materials, briefs and judging are in English, and machine-translated entry statements are perfectly welcome. We cannot pay prize money or ship prizes into countries under sanctions that block payment processing or freight; if that affects you, tell us before you enter and we will confirm.

I need an accommodation.

Tell us what you need and we will make it work. We can supply room briefs as plain text or large print, read a brief aloud on a call, accept an entry statement by voice note instead of a written form, and help you upload photographs if the form is hard to use. If a disability, illness, bereavement or caregiving makes the deadline impossible, ask before the deadline and we will extend it for you privately — no documentation required. The show floor is keyboard navigable, every image carries alt text, and the awards reveal is captioned. Write to the show desk with the subject 'accommodation' and a person, not a form, answers.