"Surrounded" Quilt for Son and Daughter-in-Law

A few months ago my son and his family moved into a new house in Athens, GA. I told them I would like to make a wall hanging or lap quilt for their new house and this is the pattern we eventually decided on. It has about 30 different batiks in it, and will backed with a different batik. I just finished adding the borders to it this morning. I will take it with us to GA next weekend so they can the progress on it, then bring it back here to get it quilted. I am hoping the long-arm quilter who is hopefully going to do my T-shirt quilt will also do this one. Son and DIL sent me two of the throw pillows from their sofa and loveseat so I can cover the pillows with some kind of quilted top to go with the quilt. She suggested the same pattern that I used in the quilt, but I am thinking about using some of the same fabrics but doing some kind of paper-pieced design for them.

I took the T-shirt quilt to the long-arm quilter Friday afternoon, along with a sample block for her to practice on. She is hoping to have the sample quilted by Wednesday when we have our Senior Center group meeting. I also got the second border on the quilt that our Senior Center is going to raffle and took that to the quilter as well - so she has a few things to work on. I was interested to see her quilter. She does some freehand work with it, but she also has some patterns that she traces with a laser light and the machine quilts that design. Seems like more skill involved in that than if you have a computer-operated quilter.

I have had some trouble letting go of my t-shirt quilt, feeling like I really wanted to do all of it myself, but knowing I would have a difficult if not impossible time doing that, and that it would not look as good as I want it to if I did do it. I am not ready to totally give up hand-quilting, but as I get more used to the idea of sharing the making of my quilts, I realize that I could make more, and there are SO many I want to make!