Just wanted to chime in - this is an amazingly clever idea, thanks so much for sharing!

I suggest avoiding diagonals, octagons, and other funky shapes for your first quilt. I'm really liking the disappearing nine patch posted above.

I LOL'd! Reminds me of the kitty litter cake - served in a (clean!unused!) cat litter pan, crumbled vanlla cake with semi-melted tootsie rolls.

Thought I'd chime in with my .02 - I have a Janome 350e and love it. Takes designs from a USB, nice stitches, good overall machine. It's worth it to go test drive these machines if at all possible.

I have to agree with the response above, $200 won't get much embroidery, though you might be able to pick up a Brother or Singer that does fancier stitches (Greek Keys, leaves); don't know if that's enough for your creative stitching needs.

I got a local quilt shop's demo Janome 350e when they decided to get out of the machine selling business for about $1000. Now that it's summer I hope to play with it a little more.