quiltingshorttimer

I view the quilting much like when you dress up and need to put accessories on to be totally dressed. Quilting does the same for a quilt. I will do a panto or E2E when either the quilt is going to be a "daily driver" or has a very busy fabric or complex block that would not allow the quilting to really show much.
but I love ruler work and am willing to put the time into it (although customers usually don't want to pay for that) and like modern quilting (what I'm becoming known for with my customers)and that's a slow process. I do try to expand my quilting skills with each quilt--unfortunately what I learned today was to add backing without taking the quilt off the frame !

jmoore

I have to agree with Macybaby...that it depends on the quilt top. I am getting closer to a LA purchase but since I rent one currently (and get charged by the hour), I do not take the time to do much more than E2E or an all over swirls or a panto. I think a specific design adds interest to a quilt and I’m sure it will become more important to me when I have my own machine.

lindaschipper

Having a smaller throat space than a long arm has, I tend to stick to loop-d-loops, meandering, and spirals. I'm still not good enough for pebbles...yet. I totally stay away from ruler work. The majority of my quilts are baby and children's quilts for charity.

coffeecozy

Nothing wrong with a simple design to quilt a quilt. My old quilts that my grandma hand quilted are very simple designs intended to hold the quilt together. They are beautiful and have survived heavy use for over 50 years. I hope that she enjoyed making them as much as I have enjoyed using them.
Flip side, I love to quilt my quilts. It's fun and it gives a purpose to my years of doodling on absolutely everything that I can get my hands on ;-) .
To pick a design I usually draw out my quilt pattern in EQ and then print out a few outline drawings of it. It gives me the main lines of the quilt so that I can decide what I want to do and where.

Karamarie

I feel the quilting should compliment the quilt and not be the star. Just me.

coopah

I take anything larger than crib to a LAer. He looks at the quilt top and then suggests patterns that will enhance the quilting. He does many, many quilts and I trust his judgement more than my own.
For crib/lap quilts, I use a walking foot and straight lines. It is more important to me to get a quilt done than to stress over the quilting.
My great-grandmother and grandmother made many quilts. Most were for everyday use and were quilted with very fine stitchs and all in straight line variations. The only one with curved lines was not used everyday as evidenced by its great condition.
Thank goodness for folks like you who love to LA!

Snooze2978

I also have a quilt machine with robotics and I love to custom quilt. I rarely do an E2E as it was so hard to get each row to match up with my old robotics but with my new system, IQ its a lot easier. Still I love to do custom. Even if I do an E2E in the body of the quilt, I'll do something different in the border area. Just my way of making it a little special. I watch all the videos I can to help me master my robotic system, I look at every quilt that has been quilted to get ideas and I'll save that pic if I think I might be able to use it in one of my future quilts or just to remind me the quilt pattern they used. I feel the quilting design is important to the quilt top but that's just my opinion for whatever its worth. If its just a utility quilt for myself I will probably do the E2E but still with the different border design. Would love to be able to do ruler work but so far haven't tried my hand at it though I have a lot of the various rulers.

joe'smom

It makes me sad that expectations about what a finished quilt looks like have been changed by the prevalence of long arm machines. I see so much tasteless over-quilting now. 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; this naturally leads to different design decisions being made.

I like the look of a simple meander on a quilt, and I think a meander works really well for many kinds of quilts. I think the 'WOW' should always be for the quilt as a whole, and that the quilting should serve the design of the quilt top. There's a truly eye-opening book called 'Quilting Makes the Quilt.' The author made a variety of quilt tops, and she made each one several times, and then quilted each one in a different way, so you can really compare the effects of different design decisions.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/quilti...&idiq=28489597

Innov8R

I am evolving as a quilter. I recently added a LA to my tools. At this point, I chose to learn one pattern well and use it on my quilts. I will add to my repertoire as I continue to evolve. Right now, I think the best course of action for me is to do what I can do WELL. I won't let myself stay stuck in this one design forever, but in the meanwhile all my quilts are swirls. I think your available tools and skills are an important consideration in any quilting decision.

feline fanatic

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.