Love my scanncut. There is a learning curve but there are lots of forums, and hope yoders book is awesome. I have seen people do whole pieced quilts from it. I have not tried just saying people have done them. It is as easy as it looks scan and cut, no computer needed. Great for applique, fussy cutting, also good for paper, vinyl, heat glitter vinyl for shirts, embroidery. I do not feel the learning curve is steep, but would be nice for someone to walk through the steps of actually doing a pattern quilt. I have seen some amy bradley, toni whitney, bunnyhill designs done with the scannncut. I do recommend if you do embroidery to at least get the 550 but the 650 is the only one that scans the 12x24 mat. I could justify the exta money for the added features of the 650 since the only new feature I cared about was the large mat scan