Feet - Walking foot

The Walking Foot is used when stitching the layers of a quilt together. The Walking Foot uses a walking technique for increased control of feeding the fabric into the sewing machine. Guide bars can be added to the foot if sewing rows of straight lines across the quilt. This foot has its own set of feed dogs which help to keep layers of fabric from shifting during the sewing process. It can also be used on fabrics that tend to move around and are hard to sew on such as velvet and corduroy.

 

Five reasons you need a walking foot:

   1. Attaching the binding

If you attempt to attach a binding to your quilt with a utility foot, then the top will slide along as you sew, and the quilt will be puckered underneath the binding when you turn it back. If you apply the binding with the walking foot attached, then you should avoid this problem.

   2. Straight line or grid quilting

Sewing a grid across the quilt surface can be a trap for unwary players, without the walking foot attached to your machine. Pulling along the rows is a result that you want to avoid.

 Many walking feet have a guide arm which attaches so you can quilt in set distances from the previous row, for a grid or line pattern.

   3. Stitching in the ditch

This is stitching very close to the seam on the low side of two adjoining patches, to stabilise the quilt, before any design quilting is attempted.

   4. Sewing continuous curves

Curved quilting across the patches in a quilt in a form of outline quilting.

   5. Sewing free-form curves

Using the walking foot to create curved grids or cables across the surface, making the quilting simple and effective.