I have seen some very big award winning quilts and my first thought was WOW, who pays for their thread! Some of them have no space unquilted. I just quilted a king top this week and it took two large spools with simple line quilting. My last hand quilted top I did quilt very close patterns with several colors of thread. But, are we getting carried away with all the quilting that ends up making the quilt top stiff? Just thinking.

I also think tons of quilting makes a quilt stiff. But it's so beautiful!!

My personal preference is for minimum quilting so it is nice and fluffy, more like a comforter. It also seems to be warmer as well as softer that way.

I think it just depends on what the quilt will be used for. Obviously, I'm not going to ask a long arm quilting artist to "do his or her thing" on a baby quilt but I might would for a quilted wallhanging for the baby's nursery. Does that make sense?? For my bed and snuggling....I too prefer very little so it is SOFT :D But the quilting that these artist do is so beautiful.....I love to look at it :D

I also love the quilts with lots of very intricate quilting detail, but I would consider most of those to be "art" quilts, intended strictly for display. I would not over quilt a piece that was meant to be used for its traditional purpose.

I started hand quilting my pink and purple OBW (finally). I am quilting it by hand with FMQ (it looks like this anyway).

I moved the hoop and found it pretty stiff but I soooo love the look and feel of it. It is going to be a wall hanging. It is no longer for my sister as originally plan b/c she would like different colors.

Kyia

I saw quilts at a show this weekend that were so heavily quilted that you could no longer tell what fabric was used..nor that it had batting in it...it was horrid...not to mention that all the quilting compromises the fabrics longevity. Used to be that we all understood that if you use poly or rayon thread on cotton fabric it WILL cut through the cotton in time..the quilts I saw this weekend would never live through a washing machine cycle..not once...the original fabric would just shred! ANY friction on those quilts, folding, creasing, etc...will ruin them in a short period of time...so what is the point?

I just don't see why they feel the need to quilt to death....McTavish if you must but NOT on any of my quilts....

and you are right, not one of those quilts hung well, they were stiff, see thru, full of needle holes, just horrid I tell you!

OH, and these were the quilts from the OK longarmers assoc. competition!

I think some quilts do have to much quilting.
I do my own FMQ on my home machine and keep it fairly simple. I have started to experiment with the pre-programed embroidery stitches on my machine for quilting.

while looking at those comp pieces, what I heard most the crowd saying was the same thing....I would never pay a quilter to do that to my quilts!

makes you wonder why the LA industry finds it so necessary to kill a quilt with quilting!Oh wait, aren't most award winning LA quilter's sponsored by thread companies??/hehehehe

I just have to ask, is the quilt being judged on the quilting or on the QUILT?