Even quilting in the strips will entail crossing a number of seams. I love hand quilting but it's not just that. I haven't had a lot of success with machine quilting. Handling all that materiel with my machine resulted in puckers and I was very unhappy with the results. I'm also thinking of paying someone to machine quilt with a long arm but hate the idea of doing all this work and then not completing it myself. Thanks for the interest in my project :-)