All by Hand

After making the hexagons by hand and hand sewing them together, I decided to finish my project with hand quilting. Why not. Up until a year or two ago, I quilted all my quilts by hand. As I was drawn more and more to modern quilting, I was attracted to the options created quilting by machine. And all this made me wonder, is machine quilting more modern than hand quilting?Certainly machine quilting can be used to complete traditional quilts and to make very traditional motifs (think old fashioned feathers, etc.), but it is also used in fun, innovative ways in many modern quilts. I've even seen some really cool combinations in modern quilts of machine and hand quilting used together.So, can a completely hand quilted quilt be modern? Is it the shapes used, rather than the method of stitching that makes quilting old fashioned vs modern, or something else? I've tried to make my hand quilting more modern by using embroidery floss and larger stitches to emphasize the quilting. Hey, I took time to hand quilt this, so I want you to notice. Other modern quilters use a variety of colors of floss or outlining to do the same thing.

So what do you think. Is hand quilting more retro cool or traditional?