Just to answer your question about the monofilament thread: As long as you use a good quality thread it will hold up well. I quilted my first quilt with this stuff in 1990 and it has been washed to death. The binding is wearing thin but the quilting thread is holding strong. One of my current projects uses monofilament in the top and a coordinating color in the bobbin. This quilt is multicolored and I didn't want the quilt lines to show. (Let's just say that my FMQ is not worth looking at closely quite yet.