I was thinking about this some more yesterday, and wanted to say that if I wanted to make an award winning quilt, I'd be hiring someone with much better quilting design sense and skills than I have to finish my pieced top. My typical response to my finished project is "another adequate project ruined by mediocre quilting". I think most judges would agree. I just don't get the art aspects of the quilting. I can be functional with a pattern, but I don't really enhance my tops I just put them together.
I do grade/evaluate my projects with a pretty harsh list of judging criteria with 10 points possible in certain areas. Workmanship I always expect to be sufficiently high, that's the pointy points, the matching seams, and the good solid seam allowances, cutting, all the things that go into workmanship. At this stage in my quilting career, nothing should ever get out of the house under 7-8 points even if I wasn't wearing my contacts and was practicing a new technique...
My key concern is "how closely does this match my mental image". Sometimes that is a lot closer than others. Some quilts that may be rather taste-specific and harder to love than others but come out exactly as I had thought... My "Wonky Bright" project came from a bag of thrift store scraps and from the interactions I have of a very improvisational quilter. I get a 10 out of 10 in this category for that project, even though that may not be apparent to others. (That one also got a 10 out of 10 for workmanship, it was all straight lines cutting and sewing, it was very simple.)
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The other thing to consider is that award winning quilts can be, but very often are not, "one and done". Just like painters may make many canvasses before getting the known one, or that a fashion photographer can take hundreds/thousands of shots even for that one cover shot. I know for me, each time I make a quilt I learn ways to make that quilt better, even if it is my 20th log cabin, if I had done this or that, the end project would be better. I try to remember the improvements, but mostly I want to move on to my next project before completely perfecting the last project. Award winning quilters take the time to redo, whether that is one sub-unit piece or an entire top.
Recently I decided (because I have some Lone Star variations coming up on my to-do list) that I wanted to do some practice in setting in corners. For me that means making a donation baby quilt out of test blocks, so I put together a few LeMoyne Stars, got my practice in, and feel more confident that I will do a good job when it is for a keeper project.