Grame/pat, did you stick with it? I'm pretty sure that fmq is not for me. I figured out the tension thing I think! But then when I got into a groove with tempo between moving my hands and machine speed, I found that I kept bumping my hands into the presser foot. So I decided to put a regular sized quilt under the needle to see how that would be, and that made up my mind to sick to straight lines! (But I hate giving up)