Originally Posted by City

To answer the question - no - no fairy dust. BUT .. if you are trying to recreate the look of Long Arm - forget it .. no matter how much practice you will never become a machine.
Some say you have to feed dogs down. I don't. I do use the bouncing foot thing (it must have a better name!) and put my machine on 1/2 speed .. if you cant' do that automatically, put a block of wood in the peddle. Go slow, have your pattern in mind, maybe even mark it with washout or air-out product, and go for it.
Go simple, and as already said several times, practice. Fix a sandwich about 15" square and practice the devil out of it. Change thread colors each time you practice .. you can use it to check stitch length, are you pulling curves too fast and getting bobbin on top like a spicer web, is the shape right, are you liking what you see?
Don't expect perfection, so work on something real that is for the kids to drag around, or that will be given some other place where it will get lots of love and scrub.
The idea of free motion is to connect the back to the front and keep the batting from sliding around. And look nice doing it.
SO - what is your objective? When you stop berating yourself you will see you are actually doing a really nice job! Don't give up ... you're a Quilter!