When I first started a friend suggested I purchase some pretty but "busy" fabric and some solid coordinating yardage. Place the printed fabric for your backing, then your batting and lastly your solid fabric. Use a thread that blends into the print but can be seen on your solid fabric. Then - Quilt away. You can see your stitched on the plain fabric and see the "pattern" that you are quilting easily. When you are done, you will have a yard (or two lol) of quiltes fabric that you could use a placemats, purses, and what ever else you can imagine.

I also bought cones of several different thread to try out. I always purchase two cones - one for the machine and one for the bobbin winder so that if I needed to refill bobbins I didn't need to unthread the machine. Good luck and have fun!

I always used muslin for practice quilts. I bought a bolt of muslin and would cut (2) 2 yard pieces and load it up with batting and use colorful thread so I could see what I was doing. I think the first 2 years of having my long arm any time a ( real quilt) wasn’t on the frame I would load up another practice quilt . My granddaughters loved the practice quilts- they used fabric markers and colored some of them, we would just zigzag the edges- they were play, picnic, beach, fort quilts. Some we cut up , finished the edges and donated to the humane society. It was a great way to try lots of different things.

When I first got my longarm, I went to Marshall dry goods and bought a few of the baby panels. They were cheap, and I learned a lot using them. After, I used my "bad ones" for the cat, and I gave the better ones to people with small children.They were thrilled, (the kids), and I was on my way!

https://marshalldrygoods.com/shop/fa...er/baby-panels