Royal Easter Show

I spent yesterday at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, demonstrating on the Embroiderer’s Guild of NSW stand. There were four of us there, and we all turned up with quite different embroidery to work on. Well planned? No, just complete chance! 🙂

As always, it was lovely spending time with other embroiderers, talking embroidery, thread, fabric, sewing, sewing machines, textiles, fashion etc… The day went very quickly, and I was pleased to get quite a lot of embroidery done. I was working on some Portuguese whitework.

I took a half an hour to have a little wander around in the vicinity of where the Embroiderer’s Guild stand was, which was situated in the Arts and Crafts Pavilion. Now, the Royal Easter Show is really all about the country coming to the city, but to me, its always been about the arts and crafts.

So I took a wander through the crafts section yesterday. When I was little, I used to dream of having something of mine in the Cabinet of Excellence display. I used to look at all the embroidery and be completely inspired and amazed. My first embroidery that went in the show was entered in the needlework section when I was in Year 10 at school. It was part of my school’s entry in the school section. We won, thus whetting my appetite for more competition at the Royal Easter Show. I entered quite a few more embroideries in the needlework section over the years, and made it into the Cabinet of Excellence twice, I think.

Well, yesterday’s viewing of the competition was really quite depressing. There were hardly any entries. It has been getting less and less each year, and is now really very small. Sometimes there are only three entries in each category. The standard didn’t seem particularly high, though there were some outstanding entries.

I have wondered many times over the past few years why it is getting so small. I’m sure the organisers have wondered the same! My thoughts are that perhaps it is just a reflection on society in general – not so many people are involved in these painstaking crafts anymore. However, even the patchwork section is getting smaller, and as far as I know, patchworking is still going strong. Another reason could be that the prizes are ridiculously small (for the amount of work that often goes into a piece of top embroidery) and the entry prices are too high. Perhaps the categories aren’t meeting the needs of embroiderers who want to enter, but can’t find an appropriate category.

Its not a problem I can solve, but it is sad to see.

In my wander around the vicinity of the Arts and Crafts Pavilion, I avoided the Showbag Pavilion – can’t remember the last time I went in there. I visited the one where there is clothing and “lifestyle” stuff; the Dome, where all the food is, and the district exhibits; and the other “lifestyle” type pavilion adjacent to the Arts and Crafts. The food used to interest me, but now I walk through and note all the things I can’t eat anymore, legacy of having had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The Lifestyle type displays show many things that “might” make my life better, but probably will really just lighten my wallet.

As for showbags, I think I’m still feeling culture shock from returning from Ethiopia there. In my mind, they are full of overpriced plastic junk that’s going to break, sit uselessly on the shelf, or be used once and then discarded.

I did NOT get the chance to go to see the animals – my purpose was to be at the show for the guild, not for sightseeing – but I feel that not seeing those parts of the show really left me with a very skewed opinion of the show. Because of the things I did see, to me, it seemed very much about overconsumption (of food and non-food junk) and consumerism. It seemed to be about excess and spending money.

It left me feeling quite sad. I must still be feeling quite a lot of culture shock.