I'm new to this also and as you can tell from my screen name I am a man with fairly large hands so when I tried to get gloves to hold the quilt with they were all to small. I ended up going to Lowe's and getting coated gardening gloves $6 for two pair and then setting my machine at half speed so I don't have to worry about my speed surging on me, and then all I had to concentrate on was my pattern and hand speed. It took me a couple of hours of practice and I was off and running with a simple meandering pattern.
Practice and visualization of the pattern is what helped me. Doing the meandering pattern I kept thinking of an open ended figure eight.
just my two cents, but hope it helps.