Walking foot frustration
 

New quilter here and I am pretty sure my walking foot doesn't actually do a darn thing. Things don't seem to feed evenly at all. It is kind of ruining my quilting enjoyment. Any tips for something I may be doing wrong? (Do you have to go slower when using it, etc) I have a Brother machine.

I don't have a Brother but make sure the foot is put on exactly right. Some of them are a bit tricky and a pain to do. Make sure that the arm on the walking foot is attached correctly to your machine.

Thanks. It is attached correctly. Just seems to be useless. I will check to see if they have any others that are compatible with my machine.

Some things to troubleshoot:

Are your feed dogs up?

Is the quilt able to feed smoothly and not hung up on something, like the edge of the table? Sometimes the weight of the quilt will drag so it's impossible to for the foot to work.

Is the thread feeding smoothly and not hung up on the spool?

I will admit the only walking feet I've used are ones made for my machines (Viking and Bernina), so I've had no experience with generic feet. But as long as I have the foot installed correctly with the arm over the needlebar, they've worked well.

Janet

I'm thinking it may be the weight of it. Seems to be a little better if I am diligent about holding it up on both sides of the needle. I think I may use it as an excuse to get myself a fancy machine and be done with it!!

yes, it should be one for your machine. the arm should be attached onto or laying on the screw that holds your needle in place and your feed dogs should be clean and in the up position so they can grab your fabric. stitch length should not be set at zero either. hope you get it working.

You go Girl, LOL

I'm all for getting new sewing machines, but you might want to check out your quilting set up and improve that, too. A table that will support the weight of the quilt helps a lot; some quilters even use their ironing board near their sewing machine. Anything to eliminate drag on the needle.

Janet

The weight could be the issue. I find that I do have to carefully support the weight of the project I'm working on in order to assist the machine - otherwise I get a seam of really tiny stitches or other strange shifts in stitching. I broke a few needles on mine during the last project because I was pulling on the sandwich too much, so there does need to be a happy medium found.

Cheers, K

I also have a Brother machine, a very basic one indeed. With that one I need to increase thread tension quite a lot, go slower than usual and use a longer stitch for walking foot stitching. Also beware of the pull and check the attaching screw occasionally; with heavy quilts mine tends to loosen sligthly but that's enough to mess my quilting up as the needle might hit the plate.