All these suggestions are wonderful to read. I've only entered 1 quilting show/contest and was so happy to earn the 1st place slot. I didn't receive a scorecard or even suggestions or comments about my entry. But, when I visit a judged show, I'm often curious about how the judges arrived at their rankings.
I think it's totally unfair to judge hand quilting against machine quilting. I like to see human pieced quilts rather than embroidery machine blocks. I mean, really, are we judging how much $$$ people have to spend on a fancy machine? Or are we concerned about the value of a person's abilities to take pieces of cloth and make masterpieces from them?
I'm sure many will have other opinions about judging... it's good to get many opinions, I think.