Once you are used to your machine and are comfortable just running it I would get a dry erase board to practice drawing your designs on before you try to quilt a piece. I have an awfull lot of sandwiches that are just practice with lots of stop and starts, funny tension, playing with stich width, ect. but before I try a new pattern, even on my sandwitches I practice on the dry erase board first. It helps your brain learn and remember which way to go. Cuts down on stops and starts, and I have discovered using fewer sandwiches before I load a quilt. I tryed for over a year to learn to do feathers, could not get them to come close to looking right, after using my dry erase board for about 6 days I can now make feathers! Not the best in the world but I am getting there. It is so easy to just erase the board a few times when you make that wrong turn in the wrong direction over and over again, than it is to remove a sandwich and start a new one