Some sit there machine either on the floor or a large table, and spread the quilt out so that it doesn't get caught up in the embroidery unit when quilting it.
You still have to manually hold up the part of the quilt that is inside of the machines throat. Other wise it can get jammed in under the embroidery unit :wink:
Personally, on anything larger than a baby quilt, this would kill my arms,hands, shoulder, neck, back.... even though the quilting embroideries stitch out quickly.
I have done applique in the hoop, which is basically the same as piecing in the hoop. As long as you can comfortably hoop your projects with the medical issues you have, you may enjoy quilting this way.
You need to factor in the price of the thread, stabilizers, embroidery programs into the cost of your quilts :wink:
You will go through a LOT of stabilizer with the piecing and the quilting... I would suggest buying as much on the bolt or roll as possible when you can find it on sale :D:D:D
Another factor to consider, heavily embroidered blocks are not going to yield a very soft feeling or very drapeable quilt.
I might suggest redwork designs, or others that are way less dense stitching :D
A suggestion might be to embroider out our blocks, and maybe do your quilting on the machine as a QAYG? You would only have smaller sections of your quilt to quilt in your machine :wink:
There are some QAYG that can be machine stitched together in strips, or quadrants :D:D:D