Originally Posted by feline fanatic

When my brother accompanied me to a quilt show, a vendor was there demoing a computer guided set up. He likened it to a player piano. Now understand, all he knows about quilting is what he has seen me do. He has watched me longarm and hand quilt. I have endeavored to expose myself to every aspect of quilting. I have not hand pieced but I have done hand applique (needle turn) and hand embroidery. I have hand quilted, quilted on my DSM (which I was completely incapable of mastering) and now I quilt on a LA, all hand guided but I do use a stitch regulator.

I was very dismayed to learn that the AQS shows have indeed separated out computer assisted quilting but they lump stitch regulated hand guided quilting into that. However, it is apparent that the winners are still hand guided quilters, even though they use a stitch regulator. But they are forced to enter into the computer assisted category just because of that. I agree that when it comes to show quilts, there should be completely separate categories for Robotic quilted and hand guided (with or without stitch regulator) just as there should be a separate category for hand quilting.

I too wish quilters who used computer assisted quilting were forth coming about it. If you are just as proud of that art as you are of doing it by hand, then shout it out. When you don't say, I think you are trying to pass off computer generated work as hand guided. If you digitized the design yourself by all means brag about it, as that is brag-worthy. If you spent hours lining up a motif, say so. I have gotten to the point where I can usually spot CG quilting even from a photo but there are some exceptional hand guided quilters out there that sometimes it is hard to tell.

With computer assist you only need to draw a motif once and the computer will reverse it, resize it, flip it or mirror it with a mouse click. Those of us that hand guide have to draw it out and trace it and redraw it again and then once we get it transferred to the quilt we stitch it out. It is a lot more work and effort, just like hand quilting is a lot more work and effort than machine quilting. And to those masters on the DSM... I bow to you for I am not worthy. I could never master the level of quilting I do on a LA on a DSM.

Oh and for the poster who asked how you can tell robotics from hand guided... Each motif is perfectly asymmetrical and identical with robotics, even if the image is reversed, resized or mirrored. Every back track is dead on with never a miss. With hand guided you will see motifs are slightly different. When the images are mirrored there are variations. Not every feather will be perfectly backtracked but you might have a hard time finding the one that was missed.