It's funny what people think about hand quilting. We had a series of quilt lectures at the historical society, and they told us that when the sewing machine came out, machine quilting became all the rage and that if you hand quilted, you were considered poor or at least of out fashion, so women- maybe a whole community- would pool their resources to buy a sewing machine ( to share) so they could machine quilt their quilts. So, our heritage is hand AND machine quilting, and yet people still divide into camps and criticize those who do it differently. I think however you want to quit your quilt is just fine. Different styles give a quilt different looks, but if you're happy, that's all that matters!