Holy Cow you couldn't have choose a more difficult subject for your first attempt at paper piecing. It's great! But there is a learning curve with paper piecing. I made a quilt with paper pieced turtles as my first attempt at PP. the first ones took hours and the last ones 15 minutes.
I'm not a fan of free motion either but I think there is a curve there also and I haven't gotten past the learning thing with it. I love the way it looks, just can't seem to get the hand of doing it.