Many different thoughts on the quilting of a quilt. When I make a quilt, I want that quilt to be all "made by me" when I give it to a friend and/or relative. Saying that, I have taught myself to machine quilt on my domestic machine. It can be a challenge when working with a big quilt, but it is doable. I like a challenge once in a while and get better at machine quilting with every quilt. It is much easier (and maybe more fun) to take it to a long armer, see all her beautiful quilts pick out a pattern and then let her deal with putting the backing, batting and quilt to together on the frame. But there is nothing more rewarding in the quilting world for me than to complete a quilt from start to finish all by myself so that when the recipient looks at the quilt given to them and they say -did you do all this yourself - I can say yes I did. Not everyone is comfortable doing their own quilting and that is OK - we are all different and unique in our own little way so keep on quilting. There will always be plenty of quilts out there for our long armers to quilt and they do "beautiful" work.