I got side-tracked by making a netbook case for a friend of mine, which I've nearly finished, but once that is done, I will be getting started on this quilt. I went slightly insane looking at threads, especially working out the colours. In the end I decided to go for DMC Perle #8, as I already have a DMC shade chart. I bought two 10g balls of a nice strong orange which should look lovely against the quilt, and a bit less girly than the pink I'd originally been envisaging. DMC have a good reputation, and I've been using their embroidery threads for many years without noticing any problems with dye batches. So I think I should be OK if I run out of thread and need to buy more.
I also splashed out on a few threads from the same range so that I would have a nice range of colours. I feel a bit daft for buying so many threads in 30 weight quilting cotton years ago, as most of them have barely been used at all, but hey, if and when I take up machine quilting, they'll be handy again. Meanwhile I am getting very keen on quilting with perle #8. I shouldn't really call it "big stitch quilting", my stitch sizes are no larger than they were in my first year of hand-quilting with 30 weight thread. I've been doing perle #8 quilting on the netbook case in four different colours, and it's looking smashing.