Welcome from Centennial, CO. OK, regarding the free motion quilting. You are going to think I am crazy but this works. Assuming you have the darning foot and your pedal is on the floor not run by a knee pedal... this is how I FMQ. I turn the right side of my sewing machine to the back, yep, the back. The needle and foot are still at the front. You still control the speed with the pedal it's just turned differently. You now have all the room you need to move your fabric from left to right or right to left. The one thing that took me awhile to get used to was reaching for the foot lift lever and reaching to the back to turn the wheel to move the needle. Sounds crazy, but it works.