Placemats, pot holders, little wall hangings. You will gain experience, and have Christmas presents ready for friends.

I like to follow Leah Day Designs & I also join newsletters for APQS & Handi Quilter even though I don't have a long-arm machine. Handi Quilter has Minute Motifs which are quite nice & they have videos to show you how they make the designs. I also took a Craftsy class or two when I was ready for more difficult/beautiful motifs.

I started practicing different designs on practice sandwiches that are 12" square. I, also, started on small lap quilts first and have only done a couple of larger quilts recently. Gloves are a must and space to throw your quilt around is helpful but puddling it and not rolling it works best...at least for me. I have a sketch book that I practice with...many talented LA quilters who teach recommend you doodle your pattern first before you start on a quilt because it trains your muscles in the movement of the design. I followed this advice and seems to help me. Practice practice practice. Good luck!

Feline Fanatic is right, it is the best book on machine quilting ever! So much so that it intimidated me for years, and I didn't even try to do it myself, lol. So I totally agree with QuiltE:

When I started quilting again last year, I realized I have so many floppies and UFO's that I would never be able to afford to send them out to be quilted, and I would die of old age before I could do them all by hand! So I just jumped in and started.

On that first quilt, my stitching ranged from just awful to pretty bad. To my surprise, my son actually asked me if he could have that quilt, and one of the reasons was that he was proud of me for learning something new!

I've done 3 more since then, and I am thrilled to say I can now do mediocre machine quilting, woohoo! A few more, and I might even get to "not bad", lol!

Good luck!

Gloves! And then just leap right in with a simple meander. I've been doing a simple meander on my 40-year old Kenmore forever and just last week took the plunge with a swirling snail-like thingie. It looks pretty darn good and I'm proud of myself for trying it. You will be too.

Thanks all! You are all so encouraging! I will finish piecing the baby quilt I am on and then start practicing.