At the beginning of the year I decided to enter the Madeira competition hosted by the Creative Craft Show. I’m really keen to get my work seen in exhibitions and all the entries for this competition were put on display at the Creative Craft Show at the NEC in Birmingham.

The theme was ‘Visions of Paris’, so in keeping with the theme, but also sticking to my own favourite subject I embroidered a croissant. I’d been thinking about making a croissant anyway; it has been on my ‘to make’ list for a while, and everyone likes a croissant! It was a bit of a rush as I only heard about the competition about a month before the submission date, but I worked really hard and got it done just in time. 

The show was this weekend so I went up to Birmingham with my mum to see my croissant hung with all the other submissions. It was a really great day out seeing everyone’s work and interpretation of the theme, and spending lots of money at all the stands! There were three prizes awarded by the judges, one for each category (hand embroidery and machine embroidery) and one for the overall winner. I didn’t receive an award, but it was still great to see my work exhibited next to everyone else’s.

I thought that was the end of it, but a couple of days after the show had finished I received a phone call to say that I had won the Visitors’ Choice award! People could vote for their favourite piece, and had voted for mine! I am so pleased to have won and feel honoured that strangers looked at my work and loved it enough to vote for it. My work will be shown at the rest of the shows this year – Farnborough, Exeter, and Glasgow – so I won’t see my croissant for another year! I feel like it’s a really exciting moment in my art career, and I’m looking forward to getting involved in more competitions and exhibitions in the future.