I recently helped judge the needlework (including quilts) at our county fair. My partner is the owner of one of our LQS's.
First off, I was very disappointed since I know that there are some wonderful quilters in our area - not a one of them entered a quilt in the fair. No, I didn't look at the names before they were judged, but I did afterwards!!
The bindings on many of the quilts were absolutely terrible. Some of them were unbelievably sloppy. I don't know whether people thought because this was 'just' a small county fair, it didn't make any difference, or if they really don't know how to bind a quilt. My partner kept saying over and over "they need to take my binding class."
The bindings were all sorts of widths (on the same quilt). Where the two ends met was some of the sloppiest work you've ever seen. Some of them were machine stitched, not neatly on the very edge of the binding, but wandered from the edge of the binding to the middle of the binding and back again!
One lady was trying to stretch her backing fabric further than it would stretch. We had planned to give her a blue ribbon until we turned the quilt over. The front was pieced well & the quilting was good. However, she had not cut the selvedge off the fabric she used for the backing which was an extremely dark green. All the way down one edge of the back of the quilt, running parallel with the binding was a white streak from the untrimmed selvedge. If she would have pieced the backing, she would have gotten that blue ribbon!
Then there was the king sized crocheted bedspread - absolutely GORGEOUS! Crocheted with the afghan stitch in ecru. Then the crocheter had used what was probably a counted cross-stitch pattern & stitched an absolutely beautiful huge picture in the center of the bedspread. Flowers were stitched all the way across the bottom of the bedspread - probably two to two and a half feet tall. A beautiful floral pattern was stitched on the top for the pillow return. Needless to say this bedspread received Best of Show in the needlework division! The kicker - a man made it. He also entered another afghan that got a blue ribbon. I guess he has made a bedspread for each of his grandkids. I cannot imagine how long it would take to make one!
The moral to my story is - if you've made a really nice quilt - pieced nicely and quilted nicely - don't ruin it with a sloppy binding! If you don't know how to put a nice neat binding on, take a class or something!