@Sewingforfun,
You find Valentina is not user friendly because you don't know where to find the numerous sources which are provided to learn it.
We have an English speaking Facebook group. I cannot post links here, but you will find the group by entering 'Valentina en pattern open source pattern making software' in the FB searchbar. We are not very numerous for the moment since I created the group some weeks ago, but it grows. In this group we have provided short tutorials and we answer to questions.
We provide a manual too at the price of 20 € as a contribution to the project. It is complete for beginners and advanced users. I have translated it myself from Russian, we have a French manual too, and we plan to have a Spanish manual someday.
The forum has been closed recently since nobody used it. But nobody used it because we have a chat channel in Telegram, where everybody can ask for help and assistance (bilingual Russian/English, with an automatic translator). Roman and other members answers each day to questions, so it is far more efficient than a forum to get help for Valentina.
We also have a wiki in Miraheze (google 'Valentina pattern making miraheze' to access to the wiki page), it is not complete since I lack of time, but you can begin to work with this.
So we provide many user friendly sources.
Seamly 2D and Valentina were the same software until 2018 but have split. Seamly 2D has no contributing developers, so Valentina has far more improved since 2 years, the 0.7 test version is quite stable and offers a lot of new features.