You're talking about hand-embroidery, right? I've done 1 quilt with cross-stitched blocks and I sort of enjoyed it. The problem was that I found out I don't like to do cross-stitch embroidery. It's way too repetitive and boring to me. Since childhood I've done the regular embroidery with the old-fashioned stitching, but haven't been able to find that in many, many years. Everything is cross-stitch. You can't find crewel work done with yarn either; of course, that wouldn't be for quilts.
Yes, it will probably take you quite a while to finish your embroidered blocks and if you hand-quilt like I did, it will take even longer, but it will be beautiful and you'll really have something to be proud of. Good luck and enjoy it!