Hey everybody, it’s Rob from Man Sewing.
And I’ve got another super cool, quick tip for you today about Free Motion machine quilting
feet.
Whew!
Breathful!
For your home domestic sewing machine.
And yes, we hear you screaming out there in the feedback more, more, more, please on free
motion.
And we’re working on it.
I’ve got a bunch of exciting tutorials for you.
But this one is just about the different styles of presser feet for our common home sewing
machines for free motion.
Now with free motion quilting, you are dropping your feed dogs so your regular presser foot
and your feed dogs, as they come up and travel, move your fabric from the front to back of
your machine.
But in free motion, the feed dogs are down and so you do all of your movement yourself.
And the most common foot is what we call a spring motion foot like this.
And now the spring motion foot rides on your needle system itself.
So when the needle comes down, the foot comes down, the needle penetrates the project, and
then as the needle comes back up, the foot actually comes up.
So you can freely move your fabric.
Now, there’s a couple of things.
If you don’t already have a free motion foot that came with your sewing machine, I
strongly recommend that you talk to the dealer who sold you the machine and you buy a specific
foot for your machine because it’s going to fit.
If not, you need to know that machines are usually divided into high shank or low shank,
and that is basically just the difference between the height of where screw holds the
foot onto your machine.
These are from one of my home machines.
It happens to be high shank.
So these might look a little bigger than your feed at home.
Don’t worry about it.
It’s just that I brought my samples from my studio.
So I’m going to show you how to put one of these on this machine right here in a second.
But just a reminder, this is going to spring up and down.
The different style, this is a really cool one.
I like it because it looks like a tattoo machine.
But it actually is what’s called a floating or a hovering foot.
This is actually a convertible style foot for a Janome machine, which I love by the
way.
But what this does, is it sits right above the fabric and it does not hop up and down
with each stitch.
So if you’re doing whole cloth style quilting, it’s fantastic because you set the height.
And then you just cruise and play and glide and stipple and meander and whatever you’re
doing all day long and it’s fabulous.
The spring motion feet are best for like applique or quilts that have a variety of thicknesses
of seam allowances.
Maybe you’re doing a four patch over here and an open square over there because it literally
recalibrates with each stitch.
The floating foot itself only calibrates at the start point.
And here’s a fun little foot.
It’s so tiny you almost probably can’t see it.
But that little foot right there actually snaps on and just hovers and this is built
onto like the Pfaff and the Viking sewing machines.
It’s considered a sense-o-matic foot.
So if you have one of those machines at home, your sense-o-matic is most like your hovering
or floating foot, not a spring motion foot, ok?
There’s a couple of other sizes and things to look at.
When you’re looking at your feet, I like the smallest possible foot because that puts
a nice squeeze on the fabric area you’re stitching through.
A lot of people like a bigger, wide open foot and or, sorry I don’t have a sample here.
They also make one that’s really cool, that’s called an open-toe foot.
The open-toe gives you a good view for where you’re going.
But every now and again, I get it snagged on some of my threads from the quilting I
was doing.
Oh, it’s kind of funny.
Now come on over here to this machine.
I’m going to go ahead and show you real quickly, and you’ll have to forgive me,
I’m working from the back of the machine.
But how to put on one of these spring motion feet.
So first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to loosen the screw, and I’ve already
pre-loosened it.
It should have been on with a screwdriver there.
And I’m going to pull the foot itself off, ok?
So I’ve got the whole shank and I’ve got the whole foot off of the machine.
And then I’m going to take, and there’s a couple of key features here.
This part right here, this is going to go where the screw held that shank on.
This is going to ride over the needle bar.
And then the needle is going to go right into the clear part of the foot there itself, ok?
So here we go.
I’m going to try to go slow.
Now what I like to do is I come in from the back first and the first thing I’m looking
for is the screw itself.
And as I slowly start to slide that up, I’m also, and I’m going to start to lower my
needle, make sure that my needle bar is below my spring arm there.
And then I’m also checking to make sure the needle is in the opening of the foot.
And now I’m going to start tightening this down.
And of course before I started machine quilting, I would take my screwdriver to that as well.
I’m going to give it a hand crank test to make sure my needle is clearing my foot.
Now when I lower the presser foot on this machine, you are going to see that the foot
comes all the way down and then it comes up and it lifts.
That’s that free motion mode.
I’m going to get those feed dogs out of the way so we’re giving you a real example
here.
Drop and up.
Drop and up, just like that.
One last little thing I want to share with you.
Whenever I’ve done a spring motion foot onto my machine, I often pause to cut threads,
fluff and stuff the quilt.
You know I’m just taking about every five or ten minutes just to break.
Getting my hands free.
Wiggling my shoulders out, that kind of thing.
At that moment, I always check the screw that’s holding the foot on and I also check the screw
that’s holding the needle in the machine.
Those parts all working together could cause vibration which could cause your needle to
fall out which is quite a frightening experience, ask me how I know.
And as a matter of fact, if you’ve got other things you want to know here at Man Sewing,
keep that feedback coming.
We’re loving it.
And we’re going to try to keep answering all of those questions.
So until next time, back to work you go.