I was diagnosed with severe carpal tunnel but managed to avoid surgery by wearing the braces as much as possible and by taking a high dosage of citrus bioflavanoid capsules daily. I wore the braces during the day as well as at night. My carpal tunnel came from bad ergonomics while typing a lot on the computer, so I also had my husband change my computer setup. I did all of my typing with the braces on.
Incidentally, I found the $20 braces at Walmart to be *much* better than the ones the doctor's office gave me!
The specialist I saw told me I'd be back for the surgery, but I proved him wrong. It took about a year, but I finally stopped having any kind of a problem. For the following year or two, any time I suspected it might be coming back I wore the braces to bed at night again. Haven't needed the braces for a year now.
I figured that carpal tunnel is basically an inflammation so, if I could reduce the inflammation and keep it reduced long enough, it should eventually go away. I'm sure I was lucky in that I didn't wait so long that scarring had set in from the inflammation.
You might want to quit hand quilting for a year to ensure you don't aggravate the inflammation. I was able to keep typing (although I cut the amount of typing I did in half!) because the braces kept my wrists in a neutral position; I don't see any way to hand quilt with braces on, though.
My dental higienist got carpal tunnel from a marathon wallpaper scraping stint and had to quit working because of it. She also took bioflavanoids and about 3 years later was symptom-free and able to go back to work. I do think it's important to stop doing the activity that brought on the carpal tunnel, if at all possible.