Dear quilter, I have two machines. I use one to stitch the initial seams and use a wooden dowel and open all of them, of course, I eventually have to iron them as well. The machine I use for quilting has the even feed foot and because I have initially opened all the seams the machine works much better with a lot less problems stitching. It takes a little more time to do this, but a lot less shrieking as the poor machine tries to quilting over too many layers. God bless and give this a try. Quilting Joan