Saturday, March 3, 2012

This Foot is Made for Walking....

...And that just what I want it to do, NOT plow fabric! If you read my Wednesday post, my question to Leah Day was regarding using a walking foot. Every time I use one, the top fabric is pushed ahead, until at some point I get a tuck. This is exactly why I started FMQ, because I couldn't straight line quilt! Crazy I know. I have scoured the manual for some kind of adjustment, to no avail, but Leah really felt it was too much pressure and there should be a knob or something on the machine to change it. I went in search of this elusive knob.

This fancy Baby Lock Ellegante, that I inherited from my Mom about 1 1/2 years ago, should be able to get up and do the dishes for me for crying in the sink!
Nothing under pressure foot for pressure adjustments

Nothing under walking foot.

Just how to change out the foot.
This little button on the bottom left of the screen that looks like a check list brings up a screen to change default settings.

Default setting is 3

Put it on the lowest setting of 1.
It was a dramatic change, the foot started walking, not plowing. Although I have to say, I would lower it even more if the machine would let me, it still wants to drag it's foot to some extent.

I was able to get all of the rest of the blocks joined together in rows for my Storybook quilt. Thank you Leah and all of the rest of you that gave me such great suggestions in the comments. I really love this quilty blog community. You all ROCK!

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I posted and deleted because I realized I was wrong. Hmmm....have you checked your installation of the foot? Oh well, I just looked at the foot and it doesn't look like you can go wrong easily there.
    I am at a loss. Do you have a Babylock dealer you can take it to? It may be due for servicing anyway.

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  3. is there an adjustment you can make on the feed dogs? My machine only has up and down, but you have a beautiful computerized machine...

    you probably already have done this, another idea would be to check the foot ankle height to make sure it is in the correct place, and make sure the arm of the walking foot is attached correctly to the needle shaft nut.

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  4. one time I had the walking foot arm ABOVE the needle shaft nut instead of on the nut and it was TOO MUCH pressure.

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  5. I am glad you figured it out! There is nothing more frustrating when you know it should work, but it doesn't! When mine started doing that, I figured it was to much foot pressure since it actually left little feed dog marks form the walking foot.It was the first time I used the walking foot on my new machine. I was in a hurry though, so I just changed the foot and went on.

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  6. I'm glad you managed to get that sorted! Your story book is looking great!

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  7. The storybook quilt is gorgeous - and boo to feet and or machines that give headaches and stress. Glad you got it sorted!

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