Practice, Practice, Practice.
You can't just get on a Longarm (LA) and expect to do incredible stuff. In one year, I've gone thru 3 bolts of muslin, 12 charity quilts and 6-8 of my own quilts to improve my skills, in addition to doing customer quilts. PPP is one way we LAer's get better. If I want to try a new technique before I put it on a customer quilt, I try it on the muslin, then do a charity quilt with several new techniques, then put it on the customer quilt if I feel I can do the quilt justice. It may take 4 hours to quilt your quilt, but we do many hours of research, classes and PPP before we touch your quilt.
And then I see a post where someone paid $20 for quilting on a baby quilt ***with batting***, and I just want to cry!!! That quilter could not have made even minimum wage, much less any return on that $$$$$ investment in her machine.
Sigh......