I am not very good at the quilting either. I usually do a stitch in the ditch or diagonals across the quilt (now that I have fancy stitches on my new machine it's not as boring) I have never hand quilted, I figure If I hand time to sit and hand quilt, I should work on my first love of cross-stitching (which has been set aside for a while) It has not been in my budget to have someone else do the quilting for me, though I do have a queen size flannel quilt that I am considering sending out. I have done quite a few (10) queens on my regular sewing machine. I need to learn to use the BSR foot on my machine and "go for it"