I love to hand quilt too. I absolutely love the process and fall in love all over again when the quilt is done. I like to use cross-hatches, which is my hand-quilting version of FMQ stippling. It is somewhat dense and flattens out an area. My lines are usually about 1/2" apart. Actually, I don't know how far apart they are. I just use the lines of an old school ruler I have. I draw the lines based on the contour lines of the ruler. I finally just bought a real 1/4" ruler the other day that will make my lines much more mathematically correct. :-)