I have always found this to be true on my Bernina 1530. I leave my feed dogs up. See what works best for your DSM and yourself.

And I don't drop my feed dogs for FMQ on my Bernina 1530. It is what works best for your DSM and yourself.

I do better with them up.

it probably could work either way. depends on many things. i took a class and we left them up. usually I do lower them though.

With my Brother machine, I got a better result with them down, but with my Janome I leave them up. Give both a try :)

This is what I do too. I have the Juki TL2010q and my dealer told me to never drop the feed dogs to have the best stitch tension even when FMQ (set stitch length to zero).

I drop my feed dogs to FMQ.. I have never tried to FMQ with the feed dogs up. Maybe I need to try that????

After watching Leah Day's quilting videos where she leaves the feed dogs up and stitch to "0" when she FMQ, I tried it and found that my stitches looked so much better.

The Juki 2010 looks a lot like the Brother 1500PQ. I use the Brother for my FMQ. I put my feed dogs up at the first mark, which is just a bit higher than if they were down. I find that it helps me "meter" my stitching, giving me a better idea of the rhythm because I can see when the they go up. Also, I was skipping a bunch of stitches when they were down. I wasn't catching the bobbin thread. You may also want to try a stretch needle, which is blunter. You "feel" it popping through the fabric and that's really helped me. I learned both of these techniques on the Yahoo website for my machine.

My feed dogs automatically go down when I plug in the stitch regulator. On my old machine, sometimes I would forget to put them down, and to tell you the truth I didn't notice a big difference up or down.