About quilting around the embroidery design:
I cross stitch a lot and when the time came to incorporate them into a quilt, I stippled around the whole quilt, and stopped at the edge of the emboidery. This made the embroidery bulk up. I debated with this for a while, and decided to continue stippling over the cross stitch, but with nylon invisible thread. My cross stitch laid flat on the quilt and it looked great. I vave continued to do this for many more quilts always with excellent results.
Maria