Diogirl, I use LAQ's for all my large quilts. I just hate wrestling with a big quilt. My full-sized double irish chain was the most heavily quilted. I had her do shamrocks in all of the chain squares, and elaborate shamrock patterns in the large spaces and the borders. Somewhere in the quilt I had her hide one four-leaf clover. She did an AWESOME job!!! I paid somewhere around $250.00, and it was worth every single penny!
That being said, before she does anything, she looks at the quilt, and we mutually decide on a pattern, how heavily it will be quilted, etc. and she gives me an estimate. That way I know up front exactly what I'm going to get and how much it will cost. There are no surprises.