ckcowl

if you really want to hand quilt it then by all means keep going, it will get easier and look better with time, and be easier too, just make your stitches as even as you can and work on finding your groove, if they are a little larger than you have seen before so what? i bet the person who's you have admired have a few with uneven stitches, we all had to start at the beginning and find our 'groove'
check out some tutorials or videos & books that show different ways to make your stitches and try them all. you will get the hang of it if you keep trying. i love to hand piece, hand quilting i do sometimes but not often enough...each time i decide i want to hand quilt something its like starting all over again, i wind up stab stiching for a bit, then i start rocking, and i switch needles 2 or 3 times...but i finally figure out what i'm doing and fall into the calm process of it. you will too :)

karenm36

Thank you all for your helpful words of wisdom and encouragement! I'm going to keep doing it by hand. I found that I was initially getting 15- 18 stitches per inch but I actually like them a bit larger more like 6-8 or so and it's easier to keep uniformity that way. Since this is a queen size quilt I imagine my outer blocks will be quilted much more to my desire than my inside blocks where I have started. Will be interesting to compare the two since by the time I finish I will have done an awful lot of quilting!