You know what's so funny! Hearing about that judge passing on unmitered binding. We should send her to the quilt museum in Paducah! Let her judge all the beautiful antique quilts there and see how many she would give a ribbon to!
I remember my first jean quilt, I did not know how to put binding on and I did a really bad job of it. Later, when I learned how, I tried to get the quilt back from my then 13 year old son. He told me to keep my mitts off his quilt! He didn't care that the binding wasn't put on and that the quilt police might give me a ticket! He loved his quilt just the way it was. He got a big kick out of helping me tie his quilt.
I bet the quilt police really don't approve of "tieing" quits either. When I was a kid, that's the only way we did it. When machine quilting started being so popular, the quilting police had to relent and some, to this day, will still claim it's not a real quilt unless it's hand quilted!