Waving from Sacramento CA. I have been quilting for a while but freemotion scared me too, so I am currently enrolled in a quilting class. We use the book "Quilting made easy" by Maureen Noble. She has lots of exercises to try.
ANother great teacher is Leah Day - she has a blog online and features little video clips for her 365 quilt patterns. Have fun practicing and don't do anything too big for your first project.