Thank you to everyone who has shared pics of their handquilting here...every single one of them were exquisite.
I, too, am a handquilter. I find it relaxing and meditative. I occasionally will machine quilt a utility or child's quilt on my DSM. However, I find it too much "work" to wrangle with the quilt. I end up with a sore neck and arms. LOL Therefore I like the handquilting because I don't have those problems with it.
I will say that I find a densely handquilted quilt is soft whereas the densely machine quilted quilts I have felt feel stiff. I think it is because you have two threads going into the same space that you only have one thread with the handquilting.
That's just my opinion/experience...your mileage may vary...