Might I suggest you try using painters tape for marking the lines for quilting! It easy and fast . The sizes you have noted should not be too bad to do on a regular machine. I do hope you have a walking foot... and spray basting ... those are two things I can't do without.

Just for the record, I find straight line sewing much harder than meandering and it's harder on the body because you have to move the quilt around more. We each have our preferences.

I almost always do a large stipple, I sometimes keep track of the time, once I'm done I forget how long it took. I love FMQ and don't really care how long it takes. I'm usually doing laundry so some breaks are needed.

The fastest way to quilt for me is a large meander. It goes so much faster than straight line or ditch in the ditch. I think the last one I had a time crunch on I did in a day, with many breaks. It was a very large wall hanging, about the size of the top of a twin bed with no drape.

I feel your pain. I love to piece, but have a big stack of quilts that need quilting. I dread the sandwiching and the quilting on my DSM. I just need to get over it and get started. Is there a simple all-over pattern anyone can recommend? I've heard doing a basic pattern is sometimes easier than stippling (?)

I dread doing the quilting so have tops stacked up that I may never get around to.

My answer is, "as long as it takes." If you are doing easy it can take as few as 4 hours or as many as 25 to 30 hours for a complex quilting pattern.

I don't really have an answer to the "how long" - although I agree that an allover large-ish stipple is a pretty quick way to do it. I am going to suggest that you invest in (or dig out from wherever it is) a portable tape/CD player with headphones, and listen to some books on tape (from the library) while you work. Music is great too, of course, but sometimes getting hooked into a good plot can really make the time fly!

Alison

It depends a lot on what is appropriate for the quilt, but I found that the quickest quilting I have tried that turned out well was using a walking foot and just doing a slightly wavy, irregular grid all over at about 2 1/2-3" intervals. I did one almost the size of yours in about an hour and a half. It actually took longer to do the binding. If it makes you nervous to take off without a guide, you could pin a strip of paper down and follow it within a short distance. You might need that only for the first line in each direction. Many blocks have seams that serve as handy mileposts. The grid can also be done on the diagonal.

For some designs, wavy streamers look nice - the same idea, only going one direction. For that, I would make the lines a little closer together, with some of them crossing each other here and there. I have used that on some placemats that were stitch and flip, so no quilting was really needed, but I liked the effect, and it was very speedy. Fairly big, random loops or hearts or leaves are all pretty quick to do, but I wasn't keeping track of the time, so can't give a good guess. If you're in a hurry, remember to select batting that doesn't require close quilting. If you feel your shoulders bunching up, it's time to give yourself a break and a stretch. Hope you enjoy your project!