Granddaughter's Graduation Quilt

Okay, the story goes. We have one granddaughter and 6 grandsons between us. Jea, the granddaughter graduated this June and I decided I would make her a quilt. Well, first I'm thinking, I'll call her mom and ask what are her favorite colors. I'm thinking girlie girlie. Oh boy, I get to do something pink and purple and flowery. Well, no, she likes muted colors, browns, blues, greens. Well, there went my girlie girlie quilt. Anyway, so I came up with this one. I saw it online and ordered the kit. I do love the batiks used in this quilt. It went together really easy. It did take alot of time and hours. Once I got it pieced, I thought, hummm, I'm gonna try my hand at quilting it. I got out my stipple template and marked it with the spray on chalk stuff. Okay, that worked well. Then I decided I wanted to use a variegated thread that has some shine to it. So I spray basted the quilt together, that worked good. I put it in my machine and it worked for a bit then thread kept breaking. I changed needles, tension, bobbin thread everything I could think of that I had learned in my class. It looked terrible. So.... I sit for 3 hours taking out all of the stippling I did and decided just to sew around the blocks. I still had some breakage, but not as bad using the quilting foot, versus free motion quilting. Don't guess I'm ready for that one yet. I also made a pillow case to give it to her in. She was very surprised and sleeps with it now.