Welcome from NC...I have a wooden floor frame that is small and can sit in front of my chair so I can watch tv and then another large frame that stays in the garage for when I have friends over to quilt with me. When using the small frame, I still baste the quilt heavily...but when using the large frame, I just make my sandwich and get to work.
Lap frames make it alot easier to manage the quilting process when doing larger items..and I have various shapes and sizes of them from different sized projects.
I have found that if I don't use some type of frame, my quilt seems to come out lumpy or my stitches aren't uniform or even close to pretty.