Machine quilting? Hand quilting?

I've been quilting. Both and hand quilting and machine quilting.

The machine quilting is going more slowly than it should just because I don't really know from section to section what I want to do. It is a continual "thinking process".

"Okay. Finished quilting the crosshatch. Now to do the piecing blocks. Is there a way to do a continuous stitch? No... How about stitch in the ditch. Good enough. I'll come back to it if I have more time and thread. The applique border? Stitch in the ditch. I'll come back to it and do meandering if... same as above."

Machine quilting is an upstairs, closet myself in the sewing room for a few hours type of sewing.

And that left me without any downstairs in front of the TV sewing so I basted the Alabama Beauty and have started hand quilting that. Again stitch in the ditch. Ah! I love the repetition and meditation involved with hand quilting! A whole different activity than when I do machine quilting. Both are good and both have nice but different results.

I guess I've come to the conclusion that I couldn't do without either forms of quilting. Sometimes I want to be quick and involved minute by minute, sometimes I just want to relax and let the quilt take on it's own personality. Right now I am enjoying the fruits of both.