Sister's quilt in progress

I'm taking a break from quilting my sister's quilt. My hands and wrists get tired after a while since I just have my regular sewing machine to quilt on. Her quilt is bigger than I thought. It filled my basting tables so that's about 72" by 80". My machine does not like one of the fabrics she used. It's a white on white she used as background for the pieced blocks and an inner border. The fabric is not a true print. This means that the little white stems and leaves are applied to the white background and are slightly raised. I don't know how this kind of fabric is made but I think the appliques are fused to the background somehow. Anyway, this fabric gums my needle and was causing my machine to drop stitches. She chose a flannel for the backing which didn't help. I was panicking until I realized that my machine was only dropping stitches when I crossed a seam that involved this white fabric. I quilted one hole length of the border with no problems. So off to the quilt store to purchase every kind of needle they had in a 90/14 size. I started with a quilting needle in the 90/14 size which is what I usually use with flannel backing. So far the denim 90/14 needle is working fairly well, but I'm on my second one. I don't know if the first one had a defect or what, but my top thread kept breaking. Thus far with the second needle I haven't had that problem. On the up side, I am getting lots of practice at starting and stopping while quilting.