You’re off to a great start. The main difference between doing practice sandwiches and a “real” quilt is that you will need to learn how to manage the bulk of the quilt. So when you decide it’s time to work on a project that is larger than your practice sandwiches here are three things that I find helpful. 1.Have a table or ironing board to the left of your machine and also something to the back to help you support the quilt. This will help to reduce drag which is caused when parts of the quilt go off the side or back end of the table and will cause changes in stitch length and also lots of hard work for you shoulders, forearms and hands trying to fight against it. 2. Squish or accordian fold the quilt to help it fit through your machine rather than rolling it. Rolled quilts get stiff and it takes more time to rearrange them as you move through the quilt than it does to simply squish or accordian fold them. 3. You might want to nvest in a suspension system. I have a jury-rigged system that uses a speaker pole and the top hinge on the door to my room to suspend a bungee cord across my quilting area, I have a couple of clamps that dangle down from it on light weight bungies. The clamps help manage the quilt and really take all the weight off the surface- check out Leah Day's blog/website for hhow she did her suspension system. Or just do a google search for quilt suspension systems to get a sense of how others have cnstructed them.
Have fun with it,
Rob