The first few quilts I ever made were hand quilted and I have to brag that the stitches looked really nice. These were also baby quilts. The problem is that recently I have machine quilted quite a few quilts and they turned out great and were finished so quickly. I really wanted to hand quilt my queen size Civil War reproduction, but I'm not enjoying it at all. It's so large and I just keep staring at the largeness of it. My hubby keeps telling me that back in the olden days they may have machine quilted more if they had our technology. I don't know why I'm feeling upset by this change of heart. Does anyone else feel that they "should" handquilt, but they don't want to?

If you don't have to hurry, just take your time and enjoy the therapy of the hand work. I got tired of working on mine--took me 6 yrs--but now that it's done, I wish I had some hand quilting to do. I did lots of it "listening" to several seasons of American Idol.

A quilt is defined as 2 layers with batting in between. It does not say it has to be hand quilted to be a quilt. You still poor out your heart and soul into the quilt weither by hand or machine. Jade

Just keep thinking of the old saying "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Instead of looking at the size, divide it up into sections and focus on one part at a time.

I agree that if you are not in a hurry just take your time and enjoy it. take it one square at a time.
Im considering hand quilting mine....but Im scared of how long it would take to finish, if my stitches would look even, would I get sick of it and "forget" to finish it.

Personally I LOVE the look of the hand quilted quilts and I have been thinking about doing a civil war quilt, in the reproduction fabric and hand quilting. Right now its just a dream. There is a lot of largeness there...lol

If you just don't want to finish it my hand then by all means use your machine. Im very happy with mine that are machine quilted.

If hand quilting is what you truly want just take it a block at a time.

I have a king size hand applique quilt that I started out to hand quilting. A little ways in, I realized that I was not enjoying the experience, so I switched to doing most of it with machine quilting, with only some showcase areas done by hand. I'm pleased with this compromise. For me, making a quilt is primarily for fun, secondarily to make something functional and useful. Doing machine quilting didn't get in the way of either purpose for me.

RST

I'm hand quilting one as we speak. I work on 5 or 6 blocks a day and it is slowly getting done. This is an old quilt top that belongs to a friend. I'm just plugging a way. I would like it finished in the next couple of weeks...We'll see.

With cold weather coming on, this will be a marvelous job when watching TV, simply listening to nice music, or even listening to silence and dreamily sewing and thinking vague, soft thoughts. It is therapeutic and gently healing to do something like that.

I also love to hand quilt for all the reasons mentioned. However, if you aren't enjoying it you're missing out on the joyful process we get as quiltmakers. Finish it in the way that makes you happy. That's all that matters! :D