I looked up on the Janome site where local dealers were, one turned out to be about 10 blocks away, so I headed there and found no sign of said shop, turns out they moved a while back and whilst it's in distance, it's definitely a case of special journey required. We rang to see when they were open and whether they have the foot, they have it, but are closed the rest of the day, as they are at some trade show or other! DH also called the other shop listed and found they no longer deal in Janome, so the website was very out of date, 1 out of 3 sucess!
JoAnns doesn't have a generic foot that works either :-(.
I got a tip from a friend which enabled me to test whether a foot would make the difference, she said to drop the feed dogs and put the pressure on the pressure foot to minimum then you can move the fabric through, though not as freely, having tried that, I know I need that foot!
It's possible that with practice, the pattern that I'm wanting to do may work in the above set up, it's basically a sine wave, wave length 8 inches, amplitude 1 to 1.5 inches, so no rapid changes of direction.
I'm disappointed not to have got my hands on a foot today, DH has offered to go first thing tomorrow morning whilst I am in class.
Anne