I too love to hand quilt. Something about setting in my rocking chair at the end of a long day teaching, sipping on a hot cup of tea, TV in the background, and my quilt in a hoop on my lap warming me up, is just plain blissful. I've learned to stab stitch using both hands and it goes relatively quick for me. I can do about 12 inches of stitching in about 18 minutes, so I know how much to draw on the quilt to finish in an evening. It doesn't bother me that it takes a while to hand quilt because that is why I'm hand quilting it - I want to relax and slow down. The lap quilt I'm hand quilting right now is about half done and I started working on it in September.