I am new to machine quilting and have found that if I use the walking foot to straight line quilt the inside then use the free motion for the borders I get alot of practice with the free motion.
The main thing is doing the borders is an outside edge and is easier to handle than the inside.
When I try to do free motion on the center sections it is just to hard to move the quilt around.
I dont have a flatbed on my machine so moving the quilt around just dosnt work well.