Here are my tips for learning to enjoy the quilting process as well as the piecing.
1. Heavily starch your backing fabric before creating your quilt sandwich. I like to use a 1:1 solution of Sta-Flo liquid laundry starch and water. I use my kitchen island and "paint" the starch on using a large wall painting brush to saturate the fabric. Then I toss it in the dryer, and later iron with steam. This stabilizes the backing fabric so it is much less likely to pucker or fold on you while quilting.
I also give the top several layers of spray starch. Spray starch is not as heavy, but still helps a lot to stabilize the fabric. If you don't want to go the heavy starch route with the backing fabric, at least give it a few layers of spray starch.
Spray starch helps even with an already-basted quilt if you start having problems with puckers and tucks. Just lay out the sandwich on a large flat sheet, spray starch from the edges towards the center, let dry, then spray again. A fan speeds up the drying process between layers. Then turn the sandwich over and do the same on the other side.
2. I like using 505 to spray baste the quilt sandwich. An advantage of spray basting is that it "glues" the 3 layers together continuously (unlike pins, or widely spaced basting threads). Elmer's washable white school glue also works in this way. Before using either of these methods, use the "search" function on the board to look for tutorials. There are tips in the tutorials that save one from some common mistakes.
3. Ditch stitch-in-the-ditch!!! I started out with SITD but soon realized that it is nerve-wracking for me and quite unsatisfying because I hate the inevitable little deviations from the ditch. It took a lot of practice before I became reasonably good at free-motion quilting, but FMQ on a domestic machine (unlike FMQ on a frame) still always seems like "work" to me. Quilting should be fun! For me, on a domestic machine, this means using a walking foot and sewing organic, curving lines. Here are a few examples of what this kind of quilting looks like:
https://quiltingdigest.com/quilt-gen...-walking-foot/
http://www.sewmamasew.com/2014/04/qu...foot-quilting/
This is *way* more fun than SITD!!! Plus it goes much faster.
4. To make quilting create subtle texture rather than standing out as a design element, I like to use Superior's Bottom Line thread (a relatively fine, 60wt polyester thread), and I choose a color that will blend in with the backing fabric. My favorite color for this is #623, silver. It seems to blend with everything from white to black. Glide is a heavier polyester thread (40wt) that is great when you want the quilting to stand out a little more, and adds a little shine. I no longer use cotton threads for machine quilting as they create more lint, break more easily, and when used for dense quilting stiffen the drape of the quilt. Polyester thread, in contrast, can be used for dense quilting without stiffening the quilt.
Hope this helps!