Your flowers look wonderful. You are not alone in taking a year to get comfortable using your embroidery machine. I was the same way. A friend of mine is very good with sewing and crafting in general, when I told her I bought the embroidery machine but was rather intimated by it came over and we played with it for days. With the instruction book in hand we tested and tried various things until we got it down. I have the Viking Designer Topaz 20 - and I bought the up graded 5D Designer Program. My friend moved to Phoenix so bought her own machine - she bought the Brother PE770 and loves it. I was the same way with my Accuquilt GO too. The easiest item to use, but it did take me a bit of time to get a rhythm down to make it efficient and not waste a lot of fabric. Now I am combining the 2 because Accuquilt has so many darling appliqué patterns.