I am in the middle of making 2 king sized quilts for our bedroom. I do the tops and take them to a quilter who has done my previous king sized quilt. I wish I had the space and ability to do the project from start to finish hopefully some day.

I made three bed quilts, only quilted one, sent the others out to be quilted.
I dont have the storage for a lot of big quilts. Three is plenty for me, besides it is very expensive to make large quilts.
I learn so much more with doing a variety of lap size quilts. Which make great gifts and get used more.
My friend makes king size only and has an extra bedroom where she stacks them all on the bed. It works for her but not for me. She also sends them out for quilting.

Since handquilting is the thing I like the most I was a handquilter for hire for years. I have a round floor hoop set up in my ground floor sitting room and one in my clubbed basement. I could usually finish a queen size quilt in about six weeks just by working on it for two or three hours in the evening watching TV with my spouse. I also always have a smaller portable project ready to take with me to Bees, on vacation etc. The main machine quilting I do is on Linus projects. They are usually whole cloth backed with flannel and simply quilted with a decorative stich and colorful thread. I can make two or three of them in an afternoon while also sewing out embroidery designs on my stand alone embroidery machine. I am working toward making 14 wallhangins with historical information for my family. Each will have our last name and various symbols of our Cornish Heritage incorporated into the designs. After the passing of both of my parents I made each of my siblings a wallhanging that incorporterated the wedding photos of each of us, our parents and grandparents.

I just took a machine quilting class where they showed us how to quilt in thirds. The trick is to cut your batting with a wavy cut removing the top and bottom third - quilt the center - reattach the top or bottom batting with its companion piece using small pieces of steam a seam and then repeat for the other end. This way you are handling only the section you are working on - actually, they did spray baste - either Sullivans or June Taylor. Good Luck

I make only bed sized quilts as I have no space for wall hangings.

You know, the actual quilting on a quilt by a long arm, should not cost as much as the materials for making a quilt. That is of course, if you don't go for all the fancy stuff and just want your quilt quilted together. I am talking about free hand quilting which cost about one penny a square inch. So if your quilt is 80x80, that would be 64.00, which is not bad at all.

Me too. I live in a small apartment and just don't have the room, or desire to take on that challenge. I do machine smaller quilts, but not the double bed size and larger.
I love my LA quilting lady!

There was a topic recently about QAYG and I was all geared up about trying this but then a thought occurred to me. I get how to QAYG per block or a section of blocks but then I was wondering.... What about if we want a border or two around the quilt blocks. How would we use the QAYG method with the borders? I guess this could be worked out as long as there were no mitered corners......

yep, every large quilt that I make now, I send to have long armed quilted. So I have only made a few. I like to do the entire quilt from start to finish. So I just make wall hanging, and some lap quilts. Years ago I hand quilted everything, but that's to hard on the hands any more. So the smaller the quilt the more creativity I try to put in it. Good luck and don't be discouraged.

So far I have done two queen size and 6 large lap/couch quilts. I have only been quilting a little less than a year. The smaller ones have all been gifts.