I have a darning foot, not a walking foot. Can you still quilt in the ditch with the darning? If so, do you lower feed dogs or leave them up?

I personally haven't tried using my darning foot for that. I think it might be extremely difficult to do. If you don't want to purchase a walking foot, then maybe I'd try a foot that I could gauge my distance from the seam with, so that it would be uniform.

not the best or easiest. A walking foot will let the top material feed at the same time as the bottom so the top fabric does not pucker or inch foward. It is well worth the investment because it can be used for any stiching on thick fabric such as with polar fleece. I use it to put on binding and other straight top stiching beside SID. The darning foot or free motion foot will require you to move the fabric yourself if the teeth are down making it hard to stay in the ditch. Also If the teeth are up then the fabric may not feed right or still pucker. Invest in a walking foot!

they hit the nail on the head..you can do it, but the darning foot will not help you regulate the distance from the seam or hold the fabric straight. You could purposely make a wavyline paralleling the seam to cover up the occasional waviness created by a human trying to do a straight line. I also think that a walking foot would be much better for this.

just use a regular foot if doing straight stitching and you don't have a quilting/walking foot. just lenghten your stitch a bit to prevent pushing the fabric forward too much.

You can SITD without a walking foot.

If you can, release some of the pressure of the pressure foot, but do not drop the feeds. You need the machine to feed the fabric just as it normally would. Lowering the pressure will help go over the thick parts like seams without hanging up.

You can also SID with feed dogs down using free motion. Some quilters (not me)get good enough at controlling their FM that they prefer doing SID that way too. The advantage is that they can follow a seam without turning the fabric.

Thanks...that is what I was afraid of. I am almost finished with my first quilt top and I did want to quilt it myself but I am not good enough at fmq, so I thought perhaps SID...or crosshatch or something easy and simple. I will get a walking foot.

Buying a walking foot is a very good investment. I use it for quilting and also for sewing on the binding. I think you will be very happy with it :D:D:D

I agree. One quilter I know even does her piecing with her walking foot.