I started free motion quilting on my old Kenmore & just loved it. Did a couple of quilts with feathers & felt like I did a decent job. I just knew that if I had a little more throat space and needle down I'd be a whiz. So, I got a Janome 6600 about a year & half ago and love the space, the needle down, etc., but my free motion stitches just aren't that great and I feel like I've tried everything. On my current frustrating project I'm using Superior Bottom Line in both the needle and bobbin. I have the blue dot bobbin case and I'm using a Superior Topstitch 90/14 needle. I can see little dots of bobbin thread on top and get some eyelashing on the back around the curves. And if I'm not seeing bobbin thread on top I'm seeing needle thread on the bottom. No such thing as balanced stitches. It hardly seems to matter where I set the top tension or whether the feed dogs are up or down. And I know to slow down going around those curves. Actually, what has started working best is to leave the machine on Mode 1 with a 3.5 stitch length and drop the feed dogs. The stitches look better that way, but still not perfect. I just feel like I was doing better work when I started out on the Kenmore using Coats & Clark & whatever needle I'd had in my machine for the past six months. All my attempts to improve seem to have set me back....skill wise as well as money!
Thanks for listening!