Originally Posted by
joe'smom
I consider long arm quilting to be a separate art form from hand or DSM quilting because long arms make it possible to do so much more quilting in so much less time;
Less time than hand quilting but the time spent quilting by DSM and LA is comparable. I have quilted many quilts on my longarm that took well in excess of 60 hours and that is
just quilting time. The quilt linked here had well over 100 hours in just quilting time:
Agave Garden, the big reveal This doesn't even take into consideration the countless hours I spend researching designs, drafting them out to size and then marking the quilt which can take just as long, if not longer than the actual quilting.
A lot of people love heavily quilted. I am one of them. There is a FB page devoted to them called QITDA (Quilt it to death anonymous). And yes, I guess I do it because I can! But I also do it because I love the look of lots of texture and I think the quilting and the piecing on many quilts can have equal billing without one or the other being the star but both! There are also quilts with lots of negative space that need the quilting to be the star (the Modern quilts come to mind) and then there are whole cloths where it is all about the quilting and nothing else.
It isn't just machine quilters that do lots of dense quilting. Look at any award winning hand quilter like Andrea Stracke, Christine Wickert or so many of the amazing Japanese quilters that are showing in both the US and Japan. Many of these quilts don't leave more than an inch unquilted anywhere and do 1/4" cross hatching and tight hand stippling. Same with antique Welsh quilts so dense quilting is by no means a new fad. In fact most densely quilted quilts done by longarm are attempts to replicate the designs and look of these exquisite and amazing hand quilted quilts.