Well if it's a cop out then I have copped out on a lot of quilts, NOT!! I quilted in the ditch every one inch on some of my log cabin quilts that were queen and full size. Have "them" tell my fingers that! It's our quilts and we can quilt them any way we want to, either by hand or by machine. And by the by machine quilting is NOT new not even in 1989 when Carol Beyer Fallet (sp) won best of show for Arora, (I think it was) and it was machine quilted, well the hub bub that arose from that was unbeliveable! My friend in Oregon, her mother and grams both hand pieced their quilt tops, and sent them to a lady in TX who had a treadle sewing machine to machine quilt them for them. So contrary to some of the quilt police machine quilting in NOT new! Who are these experts who can say these dumb things aout the work we put into our quilts?? you can bet they are not on my list to gift a quilt I have made!!