Hi Kryssa, I sympathize with that 'pulling your hair out' kind of feeling! And if this group is like most of the quilters I know in person, very very few of us can afford to send a top out to a long-arm quilter though heaven knows they do wonderful work and I'd love to be able to.
These are links that helped me alot.
This first one is to a woman named Marguerite McManus. I'd watched lots of her videos, and used many of her ideas. One is for setting up a machine quilting table at home for not much money with a sheet of insulation and piece of tablecloth plastic. Works great!
http://www.crazyshortcutquilts.com/
This link is to Leah Day's website:
http://www.daystyledesigns.com/
She's a great innovator and teacher of machine quilting and shares generously with links and videos. One of her simplest tips is how to get better control of your foot controller. I go to her often and hope to buy some of her products one day. I think she's already given the info for free, and those are the kind of people I like to support when I can!
This link is for an awesome 'quilt as you go method' in the tutorials on this board, generously shared by K3N. It's readily adaptable to any pattern and I love the 'no hand-sewing' part.
http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-36303-1.htm
If it's the weight and how cumbersome working on the whole quilt is (personally that's the part I hate) you might really like quilt as you go.
Hope this turns into a fun quilting experience for you. It's no fun when part of something you enjoy turns into a misery. Good luck and I hope you'll post on your progress.
Cheers!