About three years ago I took a class for free motion embroidery. The instructor had the class to use their left foot on the footpedal. She said this would cause us to be using the creative side of our brain. Anyway, I found that by
using the left foot I was not putting so much pressure on the footpedal and now with my Janome Horizon I find that the smaller pedal is taking some of the stress off my knee. It does move around some because of the light weight. I have heard of women going to their car and getting a floor mat to set the pedal on and that it works very well.