Free motion quilting is all the rage now... additionally stencils seem to be very limited in their use... don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of beautiful stencils... problem is, how do you scale them to fit your quilt if you do anything non-standard? Fine if you want to do an elaborate border or an all-over design that can be a pain to do freehand. My main complaint is that I don't want to spend a bunch of cash for a tool I'll use once maybe twice... if your guild has a library of loaners then it makes sense to add to the collective.