Playtime!

I’ve been away for almost a week and haven’t been able to do any quilting, embroidery or knitting while I was gone. However, today was different! 🙂 A very kind person, whose name I don’t want to reveal without permission, loaned me a Westalee ruler foot to play with and test. Okay, I know I already have two ruler feet: one I adapted from a Bernina #9 foot and some o-rings, and one I purchased almost a year ago. The first wasn’t quite “stiff” enough where the o-rings were, making me worry that perhaps the ruler might move where it shouldn’t. The second works quite well, but it isn’t a standard size and doesn’t allow for exact 1/4″ spacing or multiples of that.

The Westalee foot is the right size and is very stable. Even better, it doesn’t hop at all, but glides smoothly over the quilt sandwich. I’m testing the medium shank foot on a #77 Bernina adapter shank, and I’ve lowered my foot pressure and tension quite a bit. I tried out several rulers: two that came with the foot, and a couple that I already had.

All in all, I’m very impressed with the foot. As I said above, it glides smoothly over the quilt sandwich. Even better, I can adjust its height on the Bernina shank to allow for different thicknesses of batting. I had to move my needle over one position to have it centered, but that’s not a problem, even with the single-hole needle plate. The foot is very sturdy and feels very solid when mounted on the Bernina adapter. What’s really nice is that the rulers can be used on all sides of the presser foot, which makes for lots of options; being restricted to one or two sides of the foot is very limiting.

The photo is a sample sandwich, so please disregard the bits of feathers you can see at the edge; they were from a different day’s play. 😉 I used the HandiQuilter C2 arc here to make this sample medallion, which I did very quickly, so please excuse any sloppiness. I plan to do a bit more playing with the foot, and then I suspect I will “need” to buy it. If you, too, are interested in buying a similar foot, there are several places where it is available; I can highly recommend Patsy Thompson’s site for quick and painless purchasing and delivery. 🙂 No affiliation, of course, other than being a satisfied customer.