Is that normal?

Holy cow! Several serious issues have came up over the last couple of days....I'm afraid I went about this whole quilting business in the wrong order. First, as you may recall, I got SO excited about buying fabric and getting started that I jumped in head first! But first, some good news, I have all of my fabric squares cut up and on my den floor; just waiting to be sewn together!:

Now, for the drama that has ensued! Get ready for it....I took the sewing machine out of the box that it came in and have realized that I have NO clue what to do with it. Minor detail, right? Some of you are probably saying, how does she NOT know how to use a sewing machine? Well, I took Home Ec in 7th grade with Mrs. Hillard. She was a great gal, however, I did not "retain" much of her wisdom that she passed along. My two memories:

1) When a classmate offered to lick the spoon when she was demonstrating how to make chocolate chip cookies, she said, "There shouldn't be any licking of the spoon, you should use a rubber spatula to get all of the remaining dough to make one final cookie." Whatever lady!

2) I remember making a lopsided football that I made and had a hard time keeping the stuffing inside. :(

Okay, so clearly I do not have a good "foundation" going into this project. So, I thought, huh, I'll just call my good friend Gena who recently made a quilt (which is beautiful!) and I thought she could talk me through how to use this newly-found beast that is on my dining room table and I would have it up and running in 15-20 minutes. I took pics and emailed them to her. I described it to her today and told her there was a light attached to it and a foot pedal! "Is that normal?" Standard sewing machine protocol??! Ahh! However, after receiving the picture of my Pfaff 130 (which isn't even on the current Pfaff webpage) from the 1950s she declared it was too foreign for her to give advice over the phone from KC! :(

So, here it is in all it's glory....

I have however found a couple quilting classes available near to me at "Hen Feathers Quilts"...think I might need to look into those.....

http://www.henfeathersquilts.com/index.html

Will keep ya' posted!