What a great presentation by Barbara Olson! As a result of the type of quilting she does, there was several chats about free-motion quilting. And the problem was how to do it on older and newer machines.

The new machine has a speed regulator and that makes it easy to regulate the speed, and, with constant motion of arms, to regulate the stitch length. By setting the speed, for instance, to medium level, and putting foot on the pedal all the way down, the speed will max out at the medium speed, and this can be held down and be a constant speed as a result. Thus, one can move the quilt on the flat surface at a steady rate and get decent stitch length/regulation.

However, machines w/o a speed regulator, may have a problem. The following was taken off the internet and will offer an alternative to controlling the machine and stitch regulation. I was in process of making one like the person indicates below, when I realized that my Babylock has a control and I could set it to medium, and achieve a reasonable success.