I have always been told that you MUST drop the feed dogs when you are doing Free Motion Quilting.
BUT, the other day I quilted an ENTIRE piece before I realized that I had forgotten to drop the dogs. AND, I had already noticed that my tension and stitches looked better than normal.
Then, while reading my blog-roll I came across a post by Leah Day about just this subject…..read it here.
She mirrors my thinking …..maybe you dont HAVE to drop them to achieve good FMQ……
What do you think?????
Who knew? I'll try it in the morning!
I don't know, my guess is it depends on the type of machine and how well it feeds. I've done it before by accident, and it was disatrous. Give it a try by all means, but I don't see it as a guarantee of better stitches.
I quite often leave the dogs up depending on what I am doing. There is so little difference that it doesn't matter whether I remember to drop them or not. I did read somewhere, from a very accomplished quilter, a long time ago that it was often beneficial to leave them up. Wish I could remember who it was!
I sometimes quilt with the dogs up as well. It can help control the quilt when using thinner batting but it will cause a lot of drag with puffy batting.