feline fanatic

I think all the encouragement and positive feedback on this board is great. But I felt much like the OP. My FMQ skills on a DSM never progressed beyond the meander and definitely not on anything bigger than a child size quilt (60" square). The desire was there, the will to keep trying was there but the ability to improve was NOT there. It just was not natural to me to manipulate the fabric under the needle like that. I took an in person class and I really did practice but no way was I ever going to get good at sit down FMQ on a domestic or even a large throat like the HQ Sweet 16. My shoulders tensed up my movements were jerky, I caught myself holding my breath and a FMQ session usually ended like I had just gone 9 rounds with a boxer. I did ok on meandering small things like wall hangings and table runners but anything bigger "fuhgetaboutit". Then I tried a longarm. WOW! I was born to longarm. I hit the ground running longarming. I knew with practice I could get even better then what I did in my first LA class so I scrimped and saved for over a year and got my LA machine. The movement was natural, my drawing ability translated to the longarm movement and there was suddently a wealth of quilting designs available to me both FM and pantos. I know a longarm machine isn't in the grasp of everyone and not everyone is like me and took to it like a duck takes to water, but it may be something for you to consider. You have to quilt a LOT of quilts to make the investment worth it.
And last, there is no shame in admitting defeat. Yes, there are people (like me) that will never ever master FMQ on a DSM, let alone get good at it at anything larger than a crib quilt. So for those of us in that boat, we can stick to straight line quilting only with a walking foot (I did tons of that!)hand quilt (did a lot of that too, but it took me 3 or more years to complete a quilt) send our quilts out to a LAer (Yup, did that too!) or invest in a LA ourselves. And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with any of those choices.