Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2 - Tools of the Trade

While stitching my Wholecloth I realised that I am not following my own good advice...a bit like Alice in Wonderland.

I was starting to stitch some more lines, this time curved ones, in the Twisted Clam grid using my Dynamic 6 D foot. Well, that did not work all that well for me, as it was difficult to see around the foot and my brain did not seem to want to cooperate with following the curves. Tried a few more times and stopped...bizarre, had no problem with the straight lines but could not, for the life of me, follow those gentle lines in a consistent manner. When looking at it, it was obvious that the foot itself obstructed my view, hence I could not really see what I was supposed to be following and just looking at it beforehand did not do the trick.

Yep, I have become a bit lazy and usually just whack on the Dynamic 6D foot and off I go...when in fact I should be having a look at what I am actually stitching and select the foot that would give me the best result. I have got a number of feet for the machine and in order to be able to see better, I used the newer Open Toe Freemotion Spring Foot. So, the shank came off, attached the foot, and set the mode to Spring foot freemotion. The tension for the thread I am using (Aurifil 50/2) remained more or less the same at 3.8

Open Toe Freemotion Spring Foot

It's been a while, so was a bit rusty when starting to stitch with this foot as it behaves slightly different...the foot raises and lowers with each stitch in a much more noticeable manner than the 6D foot, but I soon got the hang of it.

Visibility was very good and I was able to follow the curves of the twisted clam much better because I could actually see the line next to the one I was stitching. As you can see there are a number of wonky lines in there, but I really think that does not matter...this is as good as it gets.

The texture created by the lines looks great

When finished I switched back to the Dynamic 6D foot as I am continuing to fill in some areas with a bit of microstippling, but this time I used the modified ankle.

Again...have this very useful little thing lying around and have been too lazy to put it on and off.












This is the Dynamic 6D foot with the 'normal' shank on

and here it is with the modified ankle attached

The improvement in visibility is obvious! Can't believe that I am not using this regularly.

What about you? Are you using all those useful little bits and pieces that you have for your machine?


Karin

Pfaff Expression 4.2: Freemotion Modified Ankle

I first heard about the Freemotion Ankle from Kviltstina from Sweden. She directed me to Patsy Thompsons website for this video on the Pfaff Freemotion Modified Ankle.

Since then I have searched the internet for this, however could only locate it in the US. I was going to ask my local Pfaff dealer about this, but as luck has it, when I went to the Australian Machine Quilting Festival the other day, my Pfaff dealer had a stall and they already had them in stock.

Exciting plus...put it on the same day to finish off my meander on the Plus quilt. The shank of the Pfaff Machine looks like this:

This is the shank on the Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2 with the 6D Freemotion quilting foot. Visibility is greatly enhanced with the 6D foot but as you can see in the next picture there are some limitations when quilting with the shank obstructing some of the quilting behind the foot. Normally that requires you to look slightly on the side now and then to see where you have come from and need to go next.

This is the modified ankle:

Basically they cut off the bit where you would attach your normal sewing foot as this is not needed for FMQ

The visibility is greatly enhanced as you now do not have the lower piece obstructing your view while you FMQ .

The drawback is that you have to exchange the shank when you want to FMQ, of course...a bit fiddly but a small price to pay for the constant looking around your foot to see where you came from. I like it!

Karin