Quote Originally Posted by Meli View Post
Since you mentioned competition, I'll tell you this story. My mom and Dad belonged to the Pioneer Heritage Company for many years and assisted with numerous reenactments. After awhile, mom realized she needed something to do to keep her hands busy, and started making garden path blocks. They come out mostly round and consist of dozens of 1" finished hexies, all paper pieced. After awhile, she decided to make it into a quilt that she and dad could use in their tent while doing the reenactments. When the top was all assembled, she had the two muslin pieces for the back pinned up and ready to zip through the machine to make the seam. She told me she had it under the presser foot, ready to go, when a little voice in her head said, "Ya know, if you hand stitch this seam, it'll be 100% hand stitched." Away went the machine. She mounted the top on a piece of unbleached muslin to give it straight sides. She quilted just inside each hexie, except for the green ones that made the "path". Then she echo-stitched hexies into the negative space on the muslin. When she went up to the State Fair to see how she'd done, she couldn't find her quilt for the longest time, until someone pointed out it was hanging proudly over the sweepstakes table, with a HUGE purple ribbon on it. While it was insanely labor intensive, the results were definitely worth it!

And that, my dear, is the long, rambling way round to voting in favor of hand quilting.

And tell your daughter I'm in awe!
Beautiful story, Meli.
You may have lost me at 'negative space', but I think I know what it means to a quilter.
(I'm just trying to get a grip on piecing, and I am in AWE of you all.)
I don't know much about quilting, aside from hand-tying and a beginner's SITD...
But if a quilt top is hand-pieced, and hand-quilted, that's LEGACY. That's HERITAGE.
I wish I would have gotten into this sooner....