close...but no cigar

so yall know my irish quilt. {better yet my best friend's irish quilt} here's the lowdown in case you don't know...my bestest gal pal in the whole wide world told me that for her 30th birthday ALL she wanted was an irish quilt. i found the perfect pattern that had this lovely irish proverb appliquéd around the border, and i started the quilt without a care in the world. well i got discouraged after st. patty's day passed, then i hit an awesome weekend stride when i got the WHOLE quilt top assembled and all was looking great in my little quilting world. well, i'm not one to be afraid to tell you when i don't know how to do something. and let's face it, machine applique is SO not my forte. i've been meaning to take a class, but haven't. so, i committed myself to hand applique this proverb: "may your home always be too small to hold all of your friends" along with 3 shamrocks. yeah, so that didn't last long. first of all, it took me 3 1/2 hours to cut out all the letters and shamrocks from fabric. and i have spent, what seems like forever, doing the hand applique and all i've got done are the letters "m" and "a" with 1 shamrock. now, i'm committed to my quilting, but i don't want to be working on this quilt until the cows come home. know what i mean? so...i started brainstorming, because i'm not giving my best friend a beautiful quilt with crappy machine applique on it. and here is what i think is the solution to my problem. my best friend's name is amanda, but we call her mandie. so i was thinking that i could finish those "m" and "a" letters to spell out "mandie"...and then go ahead and put the 3 shamrocks as planned. i know that either way, she will love it. i just don't want to continue to be intimidated by the irish quilt. i swear the quilt calls to me like a foghorn, "rachel...come quilt me!" so here i am, asking yall what to do. {so i can finish this beast of a quilt and start all those other quilts with a clean conscience.}