How Judging Works

1. You submit your work

Join a challenge and upload a photo of your finished piece before the submission deadline. One submission per challenge - you can replace your photo at any time while submissions are open.

2. The challenge closes

When the deadline passes, submissions are locked and the challenge moves to judging. From this point no new photos can be added or replaced.

3. Real people judge - not algorithms, not votes

All judging is done by human judges on our team. There is no community voting and no automated scoring - every comparison is a decision made by a person looking at the actual work.

4. Pairwise comparison

Instead of giving each photo an abstract score, judges compare submissions two at a time. For each pair shown side by side, the judge picks the better entry in each of three categories:

• Execution - the quality of the crochet work itself: stitch evenness, construction, finishing;
• Color & Design - color choices and overall design of the piece;
• Presentation - how well the photo shows off the work.

A judge can also call a category a tie. This process repeats across enough pairs to compare every submission against the others.

5. Category rankings

All pairwise results are combined into a full ranking for each category separately - so every submission gets a place in Execution, a place in Color & Design, and a place in Presentation.

6. Points and the total score

Each place in a category is worth a fixed number of points (1st place earns the most, and so on down the list). The three category point values are added together into a total score:

Total score = Execution points + Color & Design points + Presentation points

7. Final places and tiebreakers

Final places are determined by the total score - highest wins. If two submissions finish with the same score:

1. The submission with the higher average category rating places higher;
2. If they are still tied, the submission that was posted earlier wins.

So submitting early can never hurt you - and can actually help in a tie.

8. Results, points, and prizes

Once judging is confirmed, results are published, every participant earns points toward the leaderboard, and the top three places receive prizes (such as coupons). Everyone gets a notification with their final place.

Questions?

Judging decisions are final, but if something looks wrong, reach out at support@jthouse.net. For the legal version of these rules, see our Terms of Service.