I have to say that I’ve never really messed around with sewing machine feet much.  But I guess I never knew what I was missing…

I bought a walking foot for my New Home sewing machine a year or so ago.  Actually, I forgot I had it, but found it several weeks ago.  I wasn’t sure what it was, or even if it went with my machine, so I tried putting it on, but for some reason the needle wouldn’t go all the way down.  I was a bit annoyed, because by then I had remembered buying it (and how much I had paid for it), so it was aggravating that it wouldn’t work.

When I was in Minnesota, I was helping my daughter with her everlasting pile of mending (she says she saves it for when I come to visit :D ).  I was trying to fix a slipcover for her, but was having trouble with the slippery material, so we put on her walking foot, and it worked like a charm.

When I got home, I was inspired to try again.  And this time I figured out how to get it to work.

New Home sewing machines were made by Janome.  I don’t know if they’re still made or not.  I got my machine from AllBrands.com probably three years ago.  I was a little leery of buying a sewing machine online, but I’ve been very happy with it.  Once I found out they were made by Janome, I figured that Janome presser feet would work on them, since I can’t find anything made for New Home.

That’s almost right.  It does take a littlbag-blog-2-001e bit of goofing around to get the Janome feet to work, but it can be done.

Here’s a picture of my walking foot.  Sorry it’s a little blurry, but my camera wouldn’t focus any better than that up close.  Look at the white handle that is just above the thumbscrew you loosen to change the needle.  The thumbscrew is black, and is just to the right and above the needle.

When I first tried the presser foot, I had the white lever underneath this thumbscrew.  When the lever is under it, the needle can’t go down all the way because it’s blocking the needle attachment.  When I put it on so the lever is above the thumbscrew, the needle can go down all the way.  I’m not sure what the lever is for, as the walking foot works just fine, even if the lever is up.

So that mystery is solved.  I didn’t know how great a walking foot is.  I used it to quilt a small project this morning, and didn’t have to contend with the material getting pushed out of kilter by the pressure foot.  Sweet!

My next sewing machine foot adventure involves a gathering foot.  I had never used one before, but I wanted to make those swirly hippie skirts that have tiers of ruffles on them.  The problem is that I absolutely detest making gathers by running lines of basting around the top of the ruffle and then pulling the thread to make gathers.  It takes forever, and the gathers always want to shift unless you use 900 pins, which makes sewing a painful experience as I manage to find everyone of them.  So a gathering foot sounded intriguing.

I used to have a ruffler attachment that came with a sewing machine I had years ago, but it looked too complicated to use, so I never tried it.  I googled rufflers and gathering feet, and the gathering foot sounded pretty easy to use.  It was also a lot less expensive, which was another factor in its favor.  I looked for one at my local stores, but nobody had one, so I turned to ebay and found Ken’s Sewing and Vacuum Center.  I bought a gathering foot from him before I left for Minneapolis.

When I got back home, it still hadn’t come, so I emailed Ken, who told me the Post Office had sent it back!  Why?  Who knows, it’s the Post Office.  They don’t have to make sense.  Anyway, Ken mailed it out again, and this time it made it to my house without any further PO-inspired detours.

bag-blog-2-003I finally sat down to play with it yesterday morning.  Aughhh!  My sewing machine feet are supposed to snap on, but try as I might, it wouldn’t snap on!  Frustration reigned.

But I was persistent.  I looked at the foot, and it has a second bar across the back, which for some reason wouldn’t allow it to snap on.  I got the idea to take off the pressure foot attachment like you would if you were putting on a walking foot.  When I took it off, the gathering foot went right on.  I put the pressure foot dealie back on my machine, and guess what, it sewed!

But now how to get it to gather?  Reading the directions on the card helped.  I was putting the material to be gathered right on top of the piece I wanted to sew it to, and it was gathering both.  I finally read the directions and realized that you only work with the piece you want gathered.  Then you sew the gathered piece on in a second step.  Once I had that down, it was a piece of cake.

The higher the tension, and the longer the stitch, the more it gathers.  I had my stitich length maxed out, and turned the tension up to 7, and it made wonderful gathers.  The piece of material was 26″ long before gathering, and about 16″ after, so hopefully I’ll be able to figure out how long to cut my pieces for ruffles.

All I can say is that this is one slick tool.  I’ll be making swirly skirts like crazy now!  It was definitely worth the hassle of trying to figure out how to get it on my sewing machine.  Oh yeah, I have to remove the presser foot assembly to take it off, too.  Oh well.