I horrible @ it also. I was even to the point of declaring my hatred for it. However. I recently did this black on black hidden star which obscured the effect. The way I saved it was by stitching around the edge of the star using white thread and the overcast stitch. That's as fancy as my machine gets. The star jumped back out and the added stitch detail highlighted the piecing. Instead of FMQ you can consider just highlighting the pattern and the piecing with accent thread color using any simple stitch.
Thanks for this thread. Learned a lot from it. I'm anxiously awaiting my first darning foot!