Thank you very much, humbird! Btw, the quilt in your avatar is beautiful!
Just one more thing I wanted to mention- on this quilt, I seem to have picked up a new habit when I stitch through a seam. To keep the stitch from being too long, I started pressing down on the fabric in front of the tip of the needle as I rocked it back up. At first I was doing it with my thumb nail- the tip of the needle gradually wore away at my thumb nail until it got ruined and I had to cut it! Now that my thumb nail is too short, I've started doing the same thing with just my thumb, but let go of the fabric just before the tip of the needle comes to the surface. This forces the needle to come up through the fabric where I want it to.