Oh,
@Bill don't give up!! I spend months doing no embroidery at all, then months doing nothing but embroidery!! It's a big learning curve but the more you use it the better everything is.
As to free embroidery designs, there are some lovely ones out there. Try Kreative Kiwi who have lots of free ITH designs and the accompanying videos to show you how to do them. Bunnycup also have some good free designs. Memories in Thread have some good designs, not free but mostly £1.50 - £3.50. There are 7,274 free designs on
https://www.embroiderydesigns.com/freeembroiderydesigns and I have had some excellent ones from there (also had some duff ones as well but only one or two).
There's lots of videos on Youtube on how to make the best use of stabiliser by reusing old bits. There's also lots of videos on how to use your machine to its best advantage. I recently watched a video on my machine and found a feature I didn't know/had forgotten it had!! (I've had my machine for well over a decade
)
I found the best thing to do was to practice on spare bits of fabric using the inbuilt designs on the machine. In fact I made a sort of reference 'book' by stitching out the designs and putting them in a folder. Most of the designs I will never use but I have a handy real life example of what they look like.
don't give up, it can be a most rewarding hobby!