Hello all,

I have a question. When stitching in the ditch do you use a walking foot and do you drop the feed dogs. I am sitting reading all about this. I have been doing everything by hand.

Thanks Ann

Pfaffs have a built-in walking foot, which is the main reason I bought it. I use the SID foot which has a guide BELOW the foot to keep me right in the ditch.

AnnM, I think you need to use the walking foot and the feed dogs. I am going to be trying this very soon and if I'm wrong I hope somebody stops me!!! I am planning on SID on a zig zag quilt and then going to try fmq between the zig zags to give it a more curvy look. Make sense?

I have an edging foot(I think that's what it's called) that has a "blade thingy" in the middle. Is that a SID foot? I have a Pfaff 7570.
Molly O

yes thats it

Roben, that's why I do SID...It does a nice job of securing all the layers, and I like the way it shows up on the back. I'm in the process of learning (on my own) the art of FM, but it will take me awhile, and like many others, I can't afford to have someone else quilt a piece for me. And the IDT foot on my Pfaff makes it easy to feed the layer through without a walking foot.

Joanne, that's what I love about my Pfaff, but I need to get the foot for SID. I keep forgetting when I'm in town...and I go almost every day to my workplace!

JoJo - you'll love it when you finally get it. It's really versatile. Ask the dealer to show you ALL the other things you can do with it. Someone in the store is bound to know - otherwise ask about it here, and we'll start describing! I'm half asleep right now, or I'd do it.

My favorite, besides SID, is to join leftover pieces of batting. Use the faggoting stitch - I think that's actually what the foot was designed to do - it's called an 'edge-joining foot.' When you join batting pieces with this stitch, it really doesn't show when the quilt is quilted. Much faster than whipping them together by hand.

I had to chuckle, Joanne, because a couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me a black trash bag FULL of scraps of batting big enough to piece together...which I did by butting the straight edges together and zigzagging them. I ended up with a piece large enough for the quilt I needed batting for! Now I just have to sandwich everything and get it quilted...which probably won't happen until after my daughter's wedding in September!

I SID a few threads beside the ditch, guess that could be echo quilting if I did more than the one line of quilting. The reason I don't SID directly on top of my piecing stitch is - I was taught that the needle could pierce and break the piecing stitch while SID, so I just never have. Has that ever happened to anyone here?

I am still a newbie and only quilted a few small wallhangings. Have five tops done now and trying to get up the nerve to start the quilting process, my Bailey 15" arrived last week, finally.

I don't use a professional long arm quilter because, and this is just my humble opinion, this is my hobby and I want these to be mine and if someone else quilts them, they will probably be much much prettier, but they won't be mine anymore, again jmho.