HI Kerry
I am also a self-taught quilter. I started out quilting mine by doing free-motion quilting on my Viking where you drop the feed dogs and move the quilt sandwich around. There are many videos on You Tube of people doing free motion quilting on their home sewing machines. Then I bought a used Grace machine quilting frame, with a new carriage that holds a Juki sewing machine with a throat space of 9x6 inches. I have done several quilts on this, and as the other people noted, you move the carriage (which has handles) with the sewing machine on it over the quilt. I watched a lot of free videos on line and joined The Quilting School
www.thequiltingschool.com. Now I have moved up to a long-arm machine, an A-1 with 23 inch throat space.
Watch a lot of videos, and see how it is done. Practice by drawing your patterns to get muscle memory, and then let your creativity flow.