Originally Posted by woodland creature

I know that there are no quilt police, so I can go ahead and do what I want. But I would like to take advantage of the collective wisdom here and see what others have tried and what the results were.

Has anyone here mixed hand and machine quilting in the same piece? Can you comment on how that worked out?

So here is the story. I am a new quilter, and have only finished two lap-sized quilts. I had sewn garments on and off for a long time, and many of those skills transferred to the piecing part, but the quilting part is a brand new thing for me. I finished piecing a top which will be a Christmas gift for my daughter. For a variety of reasons, I do not want to have someone else do the quilting, but I really want to do that part myself as well. I plan on just straight-line quilting an overall grid for most of the quilt, which is doable given my skill level. But I wanted to quilt a small cat's paw in each of the four corners. I have been practicing FMQ and the stippling is not horrible. I am very unhappy, however, with my ability to following even the simplest stencil, such as the cat's paw that I want to do. On the other hand, my hand quilting is not nearly as horrible, so I am considering hand-quilting the paw in each corner.

Has anyone had done this and can you comment on the results?