I'm one of those people who got started by saying, gee, that looks like an interesting thing to try, and just doing it. I have read books to figure out how things I've seen are done, but basically self-taught. It is not rocket science, honestly!
If you are not sure you want to go whole hog but would rather stick a toe in and see what the water;s like first, I highly recommend picking the ONE aspect of quilting that strikes you as most appealing and doing a project around just that.
Think piecing would be neat? Get a book or take a craft store evening class, piece one block, then pake it into a pillow if you want to go on and quilt it or a framed piece of wall art if you don't.
Does the actual quilting itself appeal to you? Knock together a lap sized thing using large plain squares sewn together (or even just get a single lap-sized piece of solid colored cloth) and make it into a quilt, so you are skipping as rapidly as possible to the quilting step.
Does the idea of combining colors in interesting ways appeal more? Go shopping
and make a very very simple quilt of squares or rectangles (get a book to show you simple-to-make designs), then batt and back it using a synthetic batting and just *tie* (not quilt) and bind it.
Or if you want to make intricate pictures, get a book on quilt-as-you-go designs, and make one square for turning into a pillow.
The one big thing to know is: USE APPROPRIATE FABRIC. That means 100%cotton, moderately tightly woven (looseish stuff like some of the cheap
walmart fabrics will stretch and fall apart; too-tight weaves, like pieces of bedsheets, are way too hard to sew properly, esp. with a machine).
FWIW I started out hand-quilting a big tie-dyed sheet I'd made and could'nt figure out what to do with; then a simple machine-pieced hand-quilted bed quilt; then a totally hand pieced hand quilted one for my now-husband; and so on. You don't have to follow books' ideas of how to start
Good luck, and have fun!
Pat
