Hand quilting speeds

Having just finished two large and densely hand quilted pieces, the quilting for the "Lulea Blockhus" quilt didn't take too long. I won't say it took less time than I expected, because if it had taken any longer, I wouldn't have got it finished! It took a day's worth of quilting to complete all the block centres (about 1/3 were already done), then a day and a half to finish quilting the "spirals" around the blocks. The photo below was taken with about 4 hours quilting to go.

When I was stitching this in 2002, I quilted around each block centre as a true spiral. To finish the remaining 2/3 of the quilt centre, I quilted as much as possible in straight lines going across the quilt, and stranding through between the layers to jump from one block corner to another, then finished off the inner parts by stitching an L shape or squared off U shape, because turning the quilt to stitch in a spiral was taking too much time. This is a large quilt at 93in x 69in and the random Log Cabin centre is heavy, so anything to make handling the bulk of it easier was welcome. To maintain the illusion of square spirals in the quilting pattern, I used the same shade of red perle to stitch the last 2/3 of the quilt centre - two shades were used in the top part. It is subtle and not too obvious. I wonder if anyone will spot the colour difference and think I stitched it the other way round - i.e. the part with two shades of red must have been because I ran out of one thread LOL!