No, the feed dogs don't lower on this series. It's a myth that you must lower the feed dogs to do FMQing. There is a cover plate for them (for the Elnas), but honestly I don't like this plate at all. They don't seem secure to me and they make a raised area. You could tape a card over the feed dogs instead of the cover plate, but it's really unneccessary. I prefer to just put on my darning foot and FMQ with the feed dogs up on this machine. However, I'm not a fan of it for FMQing due to the small throat space and drop in bobbin. I have many better FMQing machines, so I go to one of those instead.