I have been looking at a ditch foot and am undecided on buying it. I am a new quilter, and love it, but would you be able to use a ditch foot if you were quilting?

A ditch foot rides in the seam and is helpful for stitching-in-the-ditch. That is the only quilting task it is useful for, as far as I know. You cannot use it to sew on bindings, for example, which is one of the uses for a walking foot. You can also use a walking foot to quilt straight lines, or end-to-end wavy lines (talk about easy quilting!). If you can afford only one or the other, I would get the walking foot.

I would ask if you can bring in your machine and try them both. I discovered that a walking foot doesn't work well on my machine. :(

I was also looking at getting a ditch foot and asked an experienced quilting teacher her opinion.

She said, you can only use one foot on your machine when quilting and the walking foot in her opinion was more beneficial with the even feed and could be used for more things than just getting a straight line in the ditch.

I decided the even feed was more what I was after than a straight ditch line with puckers in the backing.

If you want to buy a walking foot go to Hancockfabric.com they have a universal one on sale this week for around $17 normally $30

Wow, that's a great price. Thanks for the info.

I use both.
I found that the ditch foot was great for sewing in the ditch on the front binding to connect the back binding. It keeps me from wandering out of the ditch.

The stitch in the ditch foot is called an edge joining foot. Most machines came with one and no one ever used it. :D Change the name and it becomes a must have item. One tip: It will be worth it to buy a quality walking foot, it works better for stitch in the ditch for me.

What kind of machine do you have? Viking has a new walking foot that has a snap in stitch in the ditch foot. It's pricey, but is on my wish list someday.

If I had to choose between the two, I'd pick the walking foot. I don't stitch in the ditch as much now that I have my new machine with decorative stitches. I am very fond of the serpentine stitch and it looks great! Very forgiving if you waver off the line. :)

i am a big fan of the walking foot love it to put on the binding