A walking foot is helpful for machine quilting because it allows all of the layers of your quilt to feed through the machine at the same time.The regular presser foot that comes on your sewing machine works with the feed dogs (the little teeth that are on the machine under the fabric. The feed dogs grab the fabric next to them and pull it through the machine as it is sewing.
That works fine when you are sewing only two layers of fabric, but when you are sewing a quilt with batting between the layers, the fabric on the bottom is being pulled by the feed dogs while the fabric on the top is being held by the presser foot.
A walking foot has built-in feed dogs that grip and advance the upper layer of the quilt, allowing all of the fabric to go through the machine at the same time, thus preventing the puckers and tucks that are the nightmares of machine quilters.
Happy Quilting!
Penny Halgren
www.How-to-Quilt.com
