Mandi, I have found the learning curve for hand quilting to be rather steep, so I'm throwing out another idea. If, by "halfway through" the machine quilting, you mean that you have quilting in all over the top but just not enough, you could switch to a contrasting thread and a slightly longer stitch. That might be more visible and could look very cool.
Also, another thought: get DH to help you trim it up at the end. Once on a low vision day, I actually put the cutter on TOP of the ruler.
hugs,
Charlotte