All the shows in my area have categories for "quilting done by others"...I machine piece and have the quilting done by a professional long arm quilter. I was having to pay for a binding to be applied but am trying machine binding for quilts that are made as gifts and that is working out well....my "practice" is on baby quilts where the machine applied binding is preferred to withstand rugged use. You see....I cannot hold a needle. I can barely pick up pins.
I got a blue ribbon at our state fair a couple of years ago for my most prized quilt. It was entered in "quilting done by others" category.
Most of the women in my quilt group that love hand quilting are our very senior seniors and one by one they are less able to do the quilting. Our younger members all prefer to use a long arm quilter. I have seen a huge shift in this in the past 5 years. The shows are even creating sub-categories in the "quilting done by others" group because of the number of entries not hand quilted.
I would take great offense to "cheating" as a description, just as soccertxi did. It's a different form, but not cheating. That, to me, is like saying acrylic paintings are cheating since they are not oil.