Wednesday 7 November 2012

Pliers and Elastic

The other day I shared a video from Leah Day about adapting the free motion foot on your sewing machine to get better results when free motion quilting.

I thought it be worth sharing my experience so far...

I bravely bent the bar at the top of the spring, but it actually snapped off... luckily it still holds the spring in place!



My pliers had prongs on so I didn't snip the plastic guide at the front as Leah suggests, but if I am honest it doesn't bother me at the moment so I think I will just leave it for now.

The hardest thing has been the elastic band..

Initially I thought the band had to be wound on so there was no gap between the spring and the top of the foot. It has worked fine, but the gap between the foot and the quilt seemed enormous and made me slightly nervous!



Today I finally put 2 and 2 together and realised that there does need to be a gap so that it skims over the top of the quilt. But it is important that it doesn't lower completely onto the quilt, otherwise you won't be able to get any free motion out of the foot!

The machine is much quieter and it is fantastic to not have the foot jumping around every stitch it takes. If it starts to go off course the elastic band can be added or removed to change the pressure the foot is putting on the quilt.

At first Leah's advice seemed a bit extreme, but I am glad I followed it!



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