My guild has a long arm. What our "experts" do is to set up a plain quilt sandwich and have all the newbees just play with it. They begin by making a bunch of cursive Ls, then go on to make stars, hearts, draw flowers, etc. They also recommend that you use markers to draw ful sized designs on old newspapers...over and over again. You can always make potholders or dog beds or some such from the practice runs. Do check out UTube.