The Right Tool For The Job

Despite the alterations I've made to my free-motion quilting foot, it still grips the fabric too hard, and makes quilting a real pain. I've got a few unfinished quilts backed up waiting for free-motion work, because I just couldn't get results I was happy with.

On Sunday, a friend who also has an Elna lent me her free-motion foot. That's it on the right:

I thought it was unlikely to be any better than the modified Janome one I've been using (on the left). It seemed as if it would also grab the fabric. In fact, lined up like this, the Elna foot looks lower than the Janome one.

On Monday, I got the chance to try it out on some scrap pieces, and discovered that I was wrong.  The Elna foot has a spring inside it, and the long arm sticking out of it is designed to cause the foot to pivot up when it is in use.  Thus the foot doesn't grip the fabric at all, and I managed to do some (not brilliant) free-motion quilting without fighting the machine! Amazing the difference using the right tool makes.

Now I need to find one of these feet.  I've searched through all my old boxes of random feet obtained from op-shops and the like, but I don't have one of these.  I've found a few for sale on eBay, but none in Australia. The Australian dollar is still up, so I might just be doing a bit of on-line purchasing soon...