Practice seems to be the key word in this thread(pardon the pun). I'm using a lot of my UFOs for practice...they all were made for myself, so why not? Most of them are scrappies, so all I'm looking for here is warmth, not quilt show quality. I've also learned that your stitch length depends on the speed at which you move your fabric and the speed at which you run your machine. If you can get those two things in sync you can do a good job.