Which Quilting Method Do I Use?

A good question.  And the answer to that is "How did you piece your top?

If you machine-pieced your top, then it's perfectly fine to either machine quilt it or have it long-armed by a professional quilter.  You're matching like to like...machine-pieced to machine-quilted.  There's nothing lost.  And either method quilting method -- either the use of a regular sewing machine or a long-arm -- will look wonderful. 

If you've machine-pieced most of your top -- say 80 percent and above -- then it's still fine to use either machine method of quilting on your top.  And again, both methods look beautiful.  If you go to my facebook page, (http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1514363689) I have several quilt show albums up.  Practically none of those quilts are hand quilted. 

But when you get below the 80 percentile on your quilt top, the waters get murky.  What work was done by hand?  Did you just set some Y-seams in?  Or did you hand-piece the entire thing?  Does the quilt have lots of needle-turn applique?  The more handwork a quilt contains, the more you seriously have to consider hand quilting it. 

I know... I know...it's time consuming...it's a committment...But in my opinion, it's necessary.  To put any machine on a quilt that's at least 50 percent handwork devalues the quilt.  And I'm not just talking about monitary value.  We all know that quilters will never be paid what our art is worth.  To have machine quilting of any type on a quilt that is heavily hand done just doesn't look right. 

This was the issue I had to deal with on my Southern Album Quilt.  Every block in that quilt top had hand applique on it.  Four of the blocks were completely needle-turn applique.  I had already spent so much time on it, I was simply anxious to finish it.  Machine quilt it, long arm it...I really didn't care, I just wanted it done and over.

Luckily cooler heads at Dragonfly prevailed and talked some sense into me.  I'm hand quilting this one and it's going to take a year to eighteen months of my time to complete, but I don't regret the decision.

After so much handwork on the whole cloth appliques, any visible machine work would have looked off-kilter.  The blue lines visible under the quilting stitches are chalk and will easily brush off once I'm finished.

On some of the blocks, I quilted around the shapes and then went in with a 1-inch x 1-inch cross hatch.

On some of the other blocks, I followed the book but essentially "listened" to what the block was telling me.  I like a lot of quilting, as you can tell.

The blocks with embroidery have given me the biggest brain burp.  I'm still working through exactly what to do with them.