Yes, there are significant differences.
Firstly, quilting is primarily required to keep the fibres or feather/down evenly spread over the whole quilt area. Otherwise the filling would literally move from one side to the other. In the past quilts were commonly made with vertical quilted sections which created channels running down the length of the quilt.
This design was commonly promoted with the story that the filling could be 'adjusted' between summer and winter by shaking the filling to one end. In reality, we suspect the reason for the channel design was simplicity i.e. cost and that there was limited mechanized quilting systems available in the early days as quilts were usually hand made.
'Channel' quilts are not desirable because the filling can move up and down the channel through normal use.
Diamond, squares, cassette quilting designs are preferable in modern quilts. They will hold the filling in one area and spread the stitching over the quilt. However, the ideal quilt would have no stitching at all, as it would be softer (the stitches actually stiffen the quilt) and warmer without stitching.
Kelly & Windsor have released a new innovation in quilt design, ‘UltraSoft' which is patent pending. The new UltraSoft quilt design is our unique innovation of internally quilting the filling fibre, to prevent the filling from moving, which is then covered with the outer cover.