Heavy quilting is not a new trend. View pictures of antique quilts that have survived, many of them are very heavily quilted by hand. Echo stitching with lines 1/8" apart, 1/2" cross hatching, 1/4" pumpkin seeds and stippling, true stippling, all done by hand. In many cases it is only the heavily quilted quilts that have survived as the quilting helped reinforce the quilt. Pepper Corey has one pictured in her book "Mastering Quilt marking" that many of the fabrics had disintegrated, the only thing holding it together was the closely spaced quilting. "The Essential Quilter" by Barbara Chainey is another book full of pictures of very heavily quilted antique quilts (mostly whole cloth). So it is definitely not a current trend. The big national shows will consistently ribbon quilts and quilting that stand out from the pack and are well done. Dense background quilting is what gets motifs to pop and draws the spectator's eye in to very specific areas.