I am a longarm quilter and I had no idea that a longarm quilter would share a label with the quilter. I get quilts in all the time and just do the quilting and out it goes. I have nothing to do with the quilt except do a job that I am payed for.
I feel that the quilter's work is all that should be recognised.
I see now that some LAQ are using the Statler Stitcher to do all sorts of fancy stitching with the computer generated images etc. and that is a preference, of course.
Let me add, that at the quilt shows I have gone to, I have heard ladies ask....who did the beautiful quilting and toally ignore the peicework of the quilter...see there? And of course, there were the quilts that you just saw the piece work...
I love to put quilts together. But I have rules ahhahahah...I tell my customers, in fact I have a written memo of what I do. I only freehand, no exception, no specials, nada...they all love my price anyway....
I sure wouldn't want all that fancy stitching to override all my work. If you notice my quilts, you will not see the quilting ..you only see my piece work.
That is because I use a thread very close in value to the fabrics and the quilting is free hand, nothing fancy..the fancy is in my piece work. The quilting I do, enhances the work on the quilt, not take away from it.
In art, one of the rules is....two bodies cannot occupy one space at the same time...If the quilt is pieced beautifully and the quilting is just as beautiful....one of them will shine through and most of the time it's the quilting, not the piece work...So think about the quilting, after you have done all that work and think about what you want to see first lol.....