Practice practice practice. I took a class at a LQS that was worth it's weight in gold. She had us playing with fat quarter size quilt sandwiches. We started off drawing on our sandwich and tracing, graduating into finding fabrics with great designs in them and going over them, then running off the fabric swatch onto our fat quarter sandwich. That was probably when the light bulb lit for me. Drawing helps considerable. As for using the machine, you have to conquer the fear and put some speed into the foot petal. It's consistancy makes or breaks free motion quilting. I actually use my little Bernina more than my longarm now when it comes to quilting.