Are you using the little "R" foot or the spring embroidery foot? Did you drop the feed dogs? And did you set the menu to Free M Floating OR the Free M spring action to match the foot? I find that I have to play around with the tension as well even though it's supposed to have the fabric advisor ... I have the 870 & when I change to the Free M Spring Action it drops the tension to 3 .... I practice & usually end up by increasing it to about 4.8 ... it seems odd but otherwise I can't seem to get it to work. HTH