help - my walking foot is leaking!
 

Hello,

I wondered if anybody could offer any advice.

I have just started to quilt a smallish lap quilt using a walking foot on my Toyota sewing machine and the foot appears to be leaking some sort of oil/grease. It's left little black dots parallel to my quilted lines. I have used it before with no problem at all but this is a disaster! I have sewn through some scrap fabric to see if I could get rid of it but it keeps happening. It's obviously unusable as a foot because it is ruining everything I sew.

Can anyone help?

Thank you:)

Kate

My walking foot requires no lubrication of any kind so I can't imagine where or how yours is leaking? Are you sure it's the walking foot that is leaving the marks?

i'm sorry, no advice... just wanted to welcome you to the QB. i hope someone has the answer for you

Check your manual for your machine. Depending on what kind you have, you may have over oiled in the area.

Because there are moving parts, walking feet do have some kind of lubricant, which is normally sealed within the casing. If it's new foot, take it back! If it's an older one I'm wondering if it's oil or the internal parts have rubbed together so much that they are abrading so it needs to be oiled! There's a Teflon lubricant that they use. I would take it to a repair place or see if you can disassemble it yourself. If you break it, well you already can't use it :o.

No, mine doesn't need any lubricating either - I just assumed it was grease left from when it was manufactured [it's about a year old]. I'm pretty sure it is the foot as none of my other feet leave any marks and also I've 'poked' a bit of fabric up into the foot and it came out with black grease on it.

Thanks to all who replied [and for the welcome!] Good advice about taking it apart, PaperPrincess - you are right, it is already useless at the moment so it can't get any worse!

I've just had a thought that I am using a thicker wadding than I have previously with this foot - I wonder if this could be a problem? Too much going through the machine perhaps - having said that, I'm using a standard type of wadding it is just a little thicker than previous ones. I should have said [and it's probably obvious] but I am fairly new to quilting!

The same thing just happened to me, I googled it and found this forum. Lots of black oil spots coming out of walking foot. Yes, I had oiled it a while back (online recommendation if it was making noise), but had used it on a couple of quilts since then. This time of course the fabric was white !!! I didn't know where it was coming from until I removed the foot and found a black greasy spot on the plate. Used a facial tissue to wipe and get inside the foot, wow a LOT of black oil. Don't know why this happened, I had used regular sewing machine oil, so maybe it reacted to a black plastic or rubber part? My husband took it to his shop and cleaned it very well, but I ordered a new one, not taking any chances, and NOT oiling this one :)

Did you also oil the machine? It *is* possible to over-oil, gradually the oil will find its way out of the machine, taking dirt with it. I had this happen once when I over-oiled, I opened the bobbin cover and found the bottom inside of my machine covered in a thin layer of oil. Lesson learned.

I remember one of the techs I used to bring my machines to, recommend that I bring in my walking foot as they actually do need some cleaning and oiling. I never did but I really don't use my walking foot that heavily as I have a long arm and do most of my quilting on that. I have however over oiled my long arm and had oil dripping down the needle. The manual recommends not parking my longarm head over a quilt when I am not using it for this reason.