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This Foot Was Made For Walking!
A walking foot (Bernina #50) is a specialty foot that provides you with an extra set of feed dogs for the top of your project. Having feed dogs on the top and the bottom will help grip and keep a hold of hard to manage fabrics or bulky projects like quilts, without you having to wrestle the fabric through your sewing machine. The walking foot attaches to your sewing machine like a regular foot, but also has a finger which rests on/around your needle bar signaling the extra set of feed dogs to pull the top fabric at the same rate as the bottom fabric.
The Bernina Walking Foot #50 comes with two convenient soles..
• Basic Sewing Sole: to be used with slippery fabrics, stripes, etc. This sole has ¼” and 1/8” markings on the sole to accurately sew quarter or eighth of an inch seams.
• Quilting Sole: has an open-toe which leads to better visibility when stitching. This sole is also equipped with ¼” and 1/8” markings for your convenience and a specially designed back, that allows the bulky quilt which you are sewing to glide easily under the walking foot.
A Walking Foot is great for general sewing for uses such as joining plaids, stripes, silks, and other slippery fabrics. The fabric will feed through evenly so you can easily match stripe lines without having them slip during sewing.
The most commonly thought of use for a walking foot is generally straight line quilting. When stitching in the ditch with your walking foot, line up the center marking in the middle of the sole so it looks like this:
The needle should fall on the “low” side of the seam right next to the “high” side. Stitch until the end of the seam line in which you would like to “stitch in the ditch”.
You can also do some decorative diagonal style quilting lines in addition to the regular “stitch in the ditch” method. Just use a ruler and fabric pencil or water-soluble pen to mark from corner to corner and stitch on the line, lining up the center mark with the line. Diagonal stitching on your project will look like this:
It’s as easy as that!
Blow Up Your Sewing Machine Problems With TNT!
If you find that your machine isn’t sewing quite right, here are a few things to check that could save you time and money. Just remember TNT, or Thread, Needle and Tension. Is the machine threaded correctly? Re-thread it
just to make sure, with the presser foot in the up position (this releases the upper thread tension disks allowing the thread to pass between them).
Are you using a good thread? It’s not one of those spools that your grandmother gave you is it? Thread gets brittle with age, especially in our dry climate here in Northern Nevada, and that could be the cause of a thread breakage problem, so try a new thread just to make sure. And the older, cheaper threads break more easily and create more fuzz in your machine. I recommend Aurifil thread, it is consistently ranked as one of the best in strength, reliability, and creates a TON less fuzz in your machine if you use it consistently. As the sewing machine technician, I can tell when a customer uses a high quality thread consistently – there’s much less fuzz gumming things up inside!
Have you changed your needle lately? Even if you have, change it again just to make sure. Bernina says that the #1 component of getting a good stitch (besides using a Bernina machine!) is the needle, so make sure it isn’t dull or bent, and for heaven’s sake don’t ever try to re-sharpen and re-use an old needle. I recommend the Klasse brand of needles. They’re reinforced above the eye to reduce breakage. And the titanium needles stay sharper much longer than the regular steel needles, they last about 5 times longer. So even though they are more expensive, they will save you money in the long run.
Lastly, make sure your tension is adjusted correctly. There should be some resistance on the bobbin thread and on the top thread when the presser foot is down. If not, you may need to bring it in for me to adjust to the right amount of resistance.
How to Use an Edgestitch Foot
An Edge Stitch or Top Stitch Foot (Bernina #10) has a guide running down the middle of the foot, which can be lined up against the edge of a piece of fabric or in a seam for perfect stitch placement.
With the Edge Stitch foot, you can Topstitch (stitch to the side of a seam) by adjusting the needle position to the left or right. Topstitching prevents seams from rolling and gives your project a finished and more professional look. Great for collars, pockets, and tops of purses, bags, and totes! We love it for finishing the edges of bag handles. Position both the blade and needle in the center of the seam, and have fun stitching perfectly placed decorative stitches on crazy patch blocks. When using this foot, follow these steps for success…
1) First, line up the blade of the foot in the seam.
2) Move the needle position to the right or left the desired amount.
3) Using the hand-wheel “bite” into the fabric with the needle, just as a precaution so the fabric does not move around.
4) Begin stitching, but make sure that the blade stays in the center of the seam.
It’s that easy to have perfect stitching exactly where you want it!
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