What a great story of your first quilt. As far as the time it takes to prepare and load a quilt, you are never told this when you are shopping. They tell you how easy it is but you never get the details and that's the way it goes. Once you have done a few you learn what your machine likes and it does get quicker and easier.
You are brave to actually do a quilt your first time on the machine, bravo for you. I just loaded solid material several times for practice before I even thought of loading a quilt. YOU ROCK!
The quilt turned out very nice.
Merry Christmas and peace in the New Year