I may be wrong, but I've been under the impression that ball point needles are for knits or stretch fabrics.

I'm no expert here, but I have only used ball point needles in garment sewing with knits/stretchy fabrics. I'd stick with either top stitching, microtex or quilting needles.

I switched to titanium coated topstitch needles for piecing, decorative stitching, and fmq on my Brother, Bernina and Janome. I use Singer quilt shop quality needles in my Singer. Singer makes two different quality of needles. One that is cheap and one that is not. UGH! How silly.