Regarding close quilting resulting in a cardboard feeling, I discovered that problem on a doll quilt that I heavily quilted with regular cotton thread. What I have found since then is that dense quilting will not stiffen a quilt as long as the quilting thread is polyester. I have densely machine quilted a large quilt with Glide polyester thread, which has a similar thickness to the cotton thread I used in the doll quilt, and the dense quilting did not stiffen up the quilt at all. It all depends on the thread.