I agree, just take some fabric you don't care about or just some plain muslin (I recycled some old curtains we took down), make a sandwich and just start playing. You can find ideas for stitch samplers on line I'm sure (there was a class included when I bought my LA). Then you could even use the completed sandwiches for pet quilts or as a machine cover (my dealer takes the ones they use for class demos and packs the machines for deliveries (they reuse them until they wear out).