Wednesday, April 15, 2009

SITD Foot???


Is this how stitching in the ditch is supposed to look?  Because I hate it.  I know it's partly because I used blue thread but if it's supposed to be "in the ditch" how much of it are you supposed to see?  I've never actually seen how it should look.

I bought the Janome 6600 SITD foot and I despise it.  Or I just don't know to use it.  It's bulky and the black blade doesn't work.  If I line it up in the ditch, the needle is off either on top of the fabric or just next to it.  It's just as obnoxious as the 1/4 inch walking foot for this machine. This is why I topstitch everything with the 6600. 

 The SITD foot for my Sapphire works beautifully so go figure but to try to quilt with it isn't really feasible.   There isn't a SITD walking foot for the Viking line and the walking foot system on the Janome is far more powerful hence using it. 

When I used the open toe foot to do SITD my quilt still slides to the left.  I talked to my Viking dealer as she sells Janomes about it and she said that the 6500 had that problem but they fixed it on the 6600 by adding the inside feed dogs.  I'm beginning to think my machine is secretly a 6500 with the cover of a 6600.  Or my "inside" feed dogs aren't working right.  This is a beautiful machine and I want so badly to love it, but I just haven't despite my efforts.     

I also run into the problem of the back is a deep blue hence using the blue thread on top.  If I used white, I would have dots on the back.  If I used white in both the bobbin and the top, I'd have white stitches all over the back.  What's the best of all the evils?

The only other solution I can think of is to add a decorative stitch 1/4 to 1/2 inch inside the embroidered square of each of the blocks using a decorative stitch or just a straight stitch and forget this stupid SITD idea.  

This is where being self taught is really frustrating and I just can't bring up the machine and my quilt and get a lesson on my time.

    

  

  

2 comments:

Amelia said...

Wow, sounds like you have a fistful of problems with your machines...guess that is why I stick to hand quilting for the most part...I don't do well with problems.

However, I think I would use white on the top...that is where all your fancy work is...just let the underneath fabric have white dots...they will form a pattern and look great.

free indeed said...

I think most times, that once you wash the quilt, those stitches (dots) sort of disappear into the batting anyway....I'd go with white on top, blue bottom..or even a variagated on the bottom to be less noticeable on top? Didn't know there were that many different feet for the 6600. That's the machine I have, and I just use the quilting foot that it came with and is built in?