I think the confusion may be between free-hand and hand-guided. Following a panto with a laser is hand-guided not free-hand. Creating your design as you go without a drawn pattern is free-hand. Semantics get us every time. :)

You might need a pot of coffee! This place is wonderful! So much eye candy & good info!

Jeri, sorry to hijack your thread, these definitions are just one of my pet peeves.

Karen McTavish is an extremely talented artist and I am a huge fan, in fact I am taking a class with her next month and I will ask her what her interpretation of it is. But in respect to my comment, absolutely not, I would not say NONE of her work would be freehand. She does not mark out her famous McTavishing filler so that is my interpretation of freehand. I have seen videos of her doing Victorian feathers with no marking what so ever, and even more impressive is she quilts without a stitch regulator, again that is what I would define as freehand. I have also seen videos of her, and many other equally accomplished longarmers, make reference marks but the detail work is not marked out. Grids are often marked out to do continuous line freehand quilting.
I am not so stringent in my interpretation of freehand as that. What I meant is that by no means following a manufactured stencil mark, panto or some other commercial quilting pattern should be considered freehand. Nor should purchasing a preprinted whole cloth and following the marks with a LA be considered freehand but instead hand guided as opposed to computer or digitally guided. But any filler background work could be freehand.

Like Sadiemae, semantics, or more appropriately playing fast and loose with them, is also a pet peeve of mine. I feel that someone calling a handguided panto or following a stencil freehand is deceptive but that is just me. When I describe any LA quilting that I have done I am as open and honest about it as possible. I will say if I have followed a stencil, came up with a design myself and marked it did ruler work or used a template of some sort or if it is fly by the seat of my pants freehand with no marking at all or any mix of the techniques.

I too apologize for hijacking this topic.