I have 2 very very nice machines...what do I use...the basic one I've had since the late 90's. I really just go forward and backward when I piece so there isn't any real reason to have a fancy one to do the piecing portion of the quilt. Until I had the bigger machines, I used the basic one to do simple quilting. As long as she can drop her feed dogs to do free motion quilting and is willing to quilt in sections, I've heard of people doing huge quilts on their basic machines.
There are many videos on Youtube that show how to quilt using basic machines...maybe if you qued up some of them for her to watch she'd realize she is only limited by her own imagination.
Of course the flip side is for you to learn to do some basic quilting (on the sly of course
) and show her just how easy it can be. Your practice pieces would be great at a local animal shelter for beds.