When the needle is down, the foot should sit on the bed. When the needle is up, as long as the horizontal piece of wire is on top of the needle clamp, it will raise up lots to be able to move the fabric around. The fabric needs to be "tight" to the bed when the needle is down and while the needle is coming out of the fabric or it will skip stitches and you don't move the fabric when the needle's in it anyway.
I did do the modification that Leah Day shows and the noise difference is amazing! I did it to my Juki and I went from hating the noise to not minding it at all. DH told me once that he could hear when I was stitching from outside. He couldn't anymore once I did the modification.
Last edited by ArchaicArcane; 02-23-2015 at 09:58 PM.
Reason: ETA stuff in blue