Free Motion Friday!

For my current fabric giveaway post, link here!

Of course, I have been playing with my New-To-Me Juki!
A little practice sandwich I made:

 

Turned into this: 

I am very happy with the FMQ performance of the machine. Still, I chose to first conquer an overdue quilt top, to get comfortable with the machine, and get a feel for the maneuverability of full size quilts. After setting up with a sample square, I chose to use the walking foot and outlined the blocks with that. When I began the inner stitching, I noticed the walking foot was actually gathering the fabric a bit, (aghh!) and I just yanked it off (to investigate later).

I am much happier with the performance without the foot. Hopefully I will finish this up today;

The Juki is perfect so far for FMQ, and I am thankful to have it in combination with my old workhorse, the Bernina 1020 (which still has excellent performance with the walking foot!). A couple comparisons if you are interested:

The cutter on the foot pedal is hard to get used to. Well, I don't care for the cutter feature much anyway since it leaves such a tiny tail from the bobbin thread, but I have turned my pedal a bit sideways to avoid accidentally stepping on that big cutter button on the pedal, which I have done several times now!

I am also not used to the needle up/down button. I like the feature so far, as long as I remember to use it, rather than the foot pedal when I want to pull my bobbin thread up to begin FMQ in the middle of a quilt. I am used to the needle up feature I use on my Bernina foot pedal, rather than a button...

I love that the Juki is: Fast, Sturdy, Quiet, it has Reverse that seems to keep the same stitch length as the fwd is set to, The Juki also has a bit longer stitch length option - nice for quick stay stitch. I also like the needleplate (increment) markings. And the throat space is great!

I am linking up with Lily's Free Motion Quilt Friday

And, for the first time, with Confession of a Fabric Addict Can I Get a Whoop Whoop!!