Follow Up on Echo Feet

Just a quick note to follow up on my earlier post about the echo feet for the Handiquilter Sweet 16. Long story short and as explained in that post, I had a ‘dud’ echo feet set. I did get the whole lot exchanged and here you can see what a difference the new set makes:

My original 3/8in echo foot

New 1/2in echo foot

As you can see in the picture on the left, my original echo foot was in the way of the needle bar. Upon closer inspection with the woman at the local HQ group we discovered that the neck of the foot was uneven (see earlier post). Initially we only exchanged the 3/8in echo foot but when I got home and looked at my other echo feet they were all the same.
The other day then I got the whole lot exchanged...on the right you can see the difference in how the new echo feet are sitting (I took a picture of the red, 1/2in foot only, but the new ones are all the same). The needle is centred and they all have a little bit of space between the needle bar and the foot. Now that is what I call excellent customer service! Very happy that I followed this up. It was only when I needed it for an entire quilt where accuracy was an issue that I actually noticed this.

Karin

Follow up on Echo Foot

I did take my echo foot set to the dealer on the weekend. When they put it on their machine, it was also not centred. In looking at it it took us a while to work out what exactly the problem was. However, on closer inspection, the problem actually was in the neck of the foot, i.e. one of the sides of the neck was thinner than the other. This is when looking from above into the neck. Here is the replacement model that has nice and even sides.

Probably a bit hard to see, but hopefully you get what I am talking about.

Also checked the clearance on the foot

You can see that I have a little bit of clearance between the needlebar and the footbar and the foot is centred. So, long story short, the foot that I had was a dud!

We did try the other echo feet and on their machine ....they were tight but it was thought that there was some clearance. When I came home I tried my other two echo feet again and ...no, there was no clearance whatsoever, in fact I could not even pull a thread through, so it is in fact hitting the needlebar. I will ring on Monday and ask for the other two to be replaced as well as I am a tad uncomfortable to have it hitting the needlebar, even if it is only by a fraction. I think my whole set has been faulty.

By the way...that was the last circle above...all done and now I can concentrate on finishing the blocks. Certainly a bit challenging to fit the circles into those sashing!

Karin

Problem With Echo Feet

Well, it pays to pay attention...

Was looking again at the alignment issue of my circles on my little baby quilt. I am doing circles in a defined 1in space using one of my echo feet (3/8in). Was actually doing another section of the sashing and started to watch the needle very closely as it went around the circle and I finally saw what was happening...

Can you see it?....the needle is not entered at all, in fact it is decidedly off. So unscrewed it and re-screwed it, but no matter how much I tried, could not get the needle to sit in the centre. Also discovered that the foot very snugly fitted against the needle bar.

In fact it is almost hitting it. Tried the bigger echo foot

Also just about hitting the needle bar! 

Had never noticed this before and am a bit horrified....then tried my other feet

No, all good... I was relieved at that.

Will go to my HQ group on Saturday and will take the echo feet in, so that it can be tried on their machines and see what they say. I dare say that this is not alright. Bit embarrassing really as I had these feet for a while and only have noticed now! 

Karin

Deciding On A Quilting Design

The Fancy Foot block is cute, but left me scratching my head for a suitable quilting design. I had decided to do ruler work instead of an allover design. I have a whole bag full of rulers by now and the best way to become really familiar with them is by using them on a quilt. I find that it does take a bit of practice to work out how to align them, the best way to hold them and which one you might prefer for which job. But first, I had to come up with something...

This took a lot of doodling on the Ipad...tried all sort of things and in the end decided to go for some straight lines to stitch down the elongated triangles in order to emphasize the circular nature of the 'foot', then do some simple curves in the square sections and some pebbles in the middle to make the middle section recede. Worked out a stitching path diagram which took the longest time...somehow I find that incredibly difficult to visualize, so out came the Ipad again.

Realised today that this may need to be revised as I did not stitch one seam down...not sure whether I like this or not as the 'foot' is puffing out a bit.

Happy with the arrangement though.

I used the following rulers for this first part:
- Pro Echo3 &5 (all time favourite shown above)
- Ditch ruler (shown above)
You would have seen the circles in the sashing. Thought I give that a try...used the long Skinny ruler to quilt a 1/4in echo and then used the 1/4in Swiss Cheese ruler. My sashing is 1 1/2in wide, so I used the 3/8in Echo foot to make the circle exactly 1in.

Was a bit impressed with that...have only really played around with the Swiss Cheese ruler on practice samples but was encouraged by the first lot that I did. Accuracy was a must as the circle fits exactly in that space with not a millimeter to spare. At this stage I also realised that I needed to do the sashing first before the dense quilting would compact the areas...so continued on that today...

Well, alignment  was an issue...I had drawn myself a center line in my sashing but somehow that did not work so well, possibly because I was drawing on the sandwiched piece, so my line was not necessarily exactly in the middle. Also, of course, my quilt is not sitting tightly on a frame but is scrunched up all over the place which does affect the alignment of things. After a while I started to eyeball this a bit, however the eye is trained for 1/4in, not 3/8in. To my surprise, at least in one of the long sashings I found that if I aligned the side markings of the circle exactly at the top of the sashing, I hit both echo lines spot on. I spent a lot of time looking at this as this made absolutely no sense, however it worked! I suspected that I was shifting the ruler ever so slightly as I was doing the circle because I was holding on too tight trying to concentrate on staying on the circle. Anyway, this is how far I got today...

Looks really nice, I think. Planning to do swirls around the applique but will have to finish all the sashing first.

Really enjoying this and getting a very good workout on all the different rulers.

Karin