I have been a hand quilter all my life - well at least since I started quilting over 35 years ago. I have completed several quilts - both hand pieced and hand quilted, won awards at shows, and when I go to a show I prefer to see the art of hand quilting on display, which seems to be getting rarer and rarer. I'm still more into traditional pattern style quilts - not really into art quilts which seems to be the rage.
That said I am in the last years of hand quilting because my hands get too stiff and sore with the arthritis setting in, so I am in the process of teaching myself to machine quilt. I tried a baby quilt last year on my little White Jeans machine which I have used for machine piecing for years. Then I began to look in earnest for a larger-throated machine because it is a lot of work, at least for me, to shove a quilt around under a machine at a table - and on the norm I do bed quilts.
I now am doing a lot of quilting (well at least up to about my 12th donation quilt for our guild as I practice with pantographs on a Brother mid-arm (9"throat) on a floor frame and am loving it to the point of knowing that I will go to a 18-20" machine as long as I don't have to spend more than $5000 for the set up. And in the searching process also got myself a new-to-me Juki 9" throat that I really , really like for piecing... I have a couple "special" quilts to finish that I really want to finish for my family with hand quilting. Still have two in a series of 4 X'mas quilts that I've finished the first two by hand and an appliques original quilt top for my oldest d - tho I may switch up to machine quilting on that as it's been in the works for over 10 years The hand-appliqued top is completed as of last year, but haven't come up with the exact quilting design, & as I'm getting into this machine quilting, am thinking it may be one that I end up doing on the machine. I believe that machine quilting is the future for me - but at this point that seems to mean that I will also turn out a few more for my g'kids and family members than I did as my kids were growing up.