free motion embroidery - the feed dogs

I absolutely love free motion embroidery!! I am trying to remember the first time I discovered it. I didn’t realise that I had to lower the feed dogs, or use a darning foot, or that good quality thread really matters….. because there is nothing worse than starting out on something new and the thread keeps breaking or you can’t figure out why it’s not as easy as it looks. But it can be as easy as it looks - I can show you how!

So over the next few blogs, I have a few handy tips for you to get started in your Free Motion Embroidery adventure.

First off, let’s talk about your sewing machine. You don’t need a fancy sewing machine to get started with FME. You do need to be able to lower the feed dogs though. This is really important for you to be able to move your fabric around with ease and stitch.

When you are sewing (let’s say) normally, the feed dogs are up, they look like teeth underneath your plate and they move up and down from the front to the back gently pulling the fabric through towards you. This helps you to get a consistent stitch length - BUT, we don’t want the fabric to be pulled through for FME, so we need to lower those feed dogs.

Depending on your sewing machine depends on how you lower your feed dogs. Some sewing machines will have a drop feed lever at the back , you will need to slide that to lower the feed dogs, other machines have a touch screen and you can lower them by finding the right screen on your sewing machine, with the touch of a button.

If you are struggling to find how to drop the feed dogs, then have a quick look in your sewing machine manual. There will be a section in there on where to find the lever or button.

Now you have found how to drop the feed dogs give your machine a good clean up before you start, change your needle and fill up your bobbin.

I will be writing lots more short blogs on FME, so please do subscribe to my newsletter as I always mention a new blog in there first.

The Free Motion Embroidery Club will be starting soon. If you are interested sign up to the wait list.

Happy stitching,

Tracy

xx