Originally Posted by Glenda m
... The instructions show to darn you don't have to have a foot. (snip)... Do I have to have a FM foot?
Hi Glenda,
Remember that “darning” and FMQ are two different things. The darning without a foot that is referred to in some of the old manuals that I’ve seen, was for more along the lines of darning holes in fabric, and that process was usually done using a hoop to clamp the fabric into stretched tightly. The operator then had to hold down the hoop and move it around to “fill” in the hole with stitches. I think I’ve seen some manuals that suggest this process for embroidering names too, but also when using a hoop to keep the fabric tight and prevent it from going up and down along with the needle. The “darning spring”, the “hopping foot”, and the standard foot (set with little down pressure) all have the function of holding the fabric down only when the needle is coming back up through the fabric, so that the thread loop required for the stitch remains in place below the fabric for the hook to come around and catch it. Also, I think most of the darning without a foot that the older manuals talk about are for a single layer of fabric (maybe two), and probably not a quilt sandwich.
My wife started getting acquainted with FMQ using my Singer 301A this weekend. She’d been doing it on her Singer 401A since the Industrial Singer 96-40 that I set up for her has been giving her fits. Well, this time her 401A started giving her problems. It was breaking the upper thread on a regular basis. I stuck the 301A and cradle in her cabinet so she could give it a try. Things went better, with minor problems getting the tension set the way she’d like. Part of that could be that she test-sewed on a small sandwich made from trimmings off of the last quilt that she did, and the test stitches looked good. But that was different fabric than this quilt.
BTW - When I showed her how to lower the feed dogs on the 301A, a lightbulb went off in her head about the problems with the 401A. Yep, you guessed it. She had forgotten to raise the needleplate and/or set the stitch length to zero when changing from piecing to FMQ! The feed was still fighting her, even though she had a hopping foot on in place of the regular foot. At least I got the chance to see how she liked the 301A for FMQ. The jury is still out, but she thinks it will end up being better than the 401A. She wants to run some more stitches on the 301A before she gives me the thumbs-up.
CD in Oklahoma
FMQ on Singer 301A
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