Loading the Hoop and Getting Comfortable
Sandwich is basted, holds still on its own. Pick it up by one corner and nothing shifts. Now we get it in the hoop and set you up to actually quilt, which is its own small skill before the stitching even starts.
Getting the sandwich into the hoop
Lay the outer ring flat on your table. Center the part of the quilt you're going to start on over it. Press the inner ring down inside the outer one, and you'll feel it sort of pop into place.
Here's what beginners get wrong: they crank it drum-tight, like a snare. Don't. You want it snug but with a little give when you press on it with your palm. Firm handshake, not death grip. Too tight and your needle can't rock through the layers right, and you'll fight it the whole time. Too loose and everything shifts under your hand while you're trying to stitch.
Loosen the screw on the outer ring, seat the fabric, tighten it back down, check the tension with your palm, adjust again. This takes people a few tries the first time. Normal. I still nudge mine after I've been sitting a while, because the fabric relaxes and the tension changes on you.
Where to sit
This matters more than people think. Rest the hoop on the table edge or in your lap, tilted a little away from you, with good light on it. Not overhead light throwing your own shadow onto your work. A lamp off to the side, or a window in daytime, works better.
I do most of my quilting at the kitchen table, honestly. Same spot I do everything else. Some winters that table's seen more quilting hours than dinners, especially the years it's too icy to get up the canyon and hiking's off the table. Quilting's become my cold-months thing that way. You don't need a special setup. You need decent light, a chair that doesn't wreck your back in twenty minutes, and the hoop at a height where your shoulders aren't hiked up around your ears.
Hand position
One hand stays under the hoop, one stays on top. The underneath hand does more than people expect. It's feeling for the needle coming through and guiding it back up. The top hand pushes the needle down and rocks it.
Get your underneath finger a thimble or a bit of leather if the bare fingertip's too much. You'll be pricked more than once starting out. Part of it, not a sign you're doing something wrong.
Starting small
For your first real quilting session, don't try to stitch a big design across the whole thing. Pick a short, straight line, quilting in the ditch along one seam, or a simple line a few inches long, and just get used to loading the needle, rocking the stitch, and moving the hoop as you go. You'll reposition the hoop a lot at first. Fine. You're not supposed to reach across the whole thing from one hoop placement.
A word on time and money, since we're here
I keep a spreadsheet of every project I make: yardage, cost, hours put in, and what it'd work out to per hour if I'd sold the thing. My first quilt came out to about two dollars and ten cents an hour. I showed my husband and he said that's terrible, and I said heck yes it is, that's exactly why I don't sell them. I make this stuff because I want it and because the making settles my head, not because it pencils out as a job. Track your hours if it helps you see that clearly too. It's not depressing once you understand what you're actually buying with the time.
That's also part of why I keep saying hand quilting isn't the slow option people assume. A machine makes you fight setup and tension and a big piece of equipment every single time you sit down. This, you can pick up for ten minutes while something's in the oven and put down again. That's the only kind of time I actually have most days.
A plain caution
Watch your underneath fingers when you're new to this. The needle's coming through blind on that side and it will find you before you learn to feel it coming. Nothing serious, just a pinprick, but it startles people the first few times and they yank the hoop around. Keep the hoop steady, expect the occasional poke, and don't make a big production out of it.
Before next time
Get comfortable loading and unloading the hoop a couple times so it's not a fumble when we start the actual quilting stitch next lesson. Got a thimble sitting in a drawer somewhere from your mom or grandma? Dig it out and see if it fits.