Quilting Tools Part 3

 One thing I love about my Janome machines is the wonderful free motion quilting foot set that is made for these machines. Above, from left, the standard darning foot that comes with the machine (altered to open toe by my husband), the convertible free motion quilting set with it's 3 toes, and on the far right, the ruler work toe I bought separately (along with a open toe with the opening oriented to the end of the machine for use with a frame system).

In the above picture, the ruler work toe is attached to the convertible FMQ foot. You can also see that the big plastic bull's eye toe looks different than what you may have. That's because I altered it for some experimenting with free motion couching of yarn. You can read about the how and why I altered this foot here.

This convertible foot is so fabulous for free motion quilting! No annoying clackity clack as it goes up and down. There's an adjustment screw too that raises or lowers the height of the foot for the thickness of your quilt sandwich or to help ease in fullness. I have also noticed that the rounded shape of the ruler work toe doesn't 'push' the fullness as much as the open toe and though I don't use it much I think it does better than the regular closed toe. Though of course, it is harder to see your work with the ruler toe.

Janome makes the convertible FMQ foot set in both high and low shank versions, so you should be able to use it on some non-Janome machines.

Look for my post on using the ruler work toe soon. Also a post on working with a commonly available darning foot and how to make it better.

If you have found these posts useful or if you have a question on how I use these tools, leave me a comment please.