General sewing machine feet and how to use them

Hey everyone! For today’s tips and tricks, I wanna give some insight on what I know about these four basic sewing machine feet. I’m obviously not a professional and don’t know more than many sewers know, but I’m going to do my best to give a brief yet helpful explanation of how to use each of these feet.

Going from left to right, the first one is the most basic foot, literally called the all purpose foot. This is the one you will use the most often. It is used for the straight lines, zig-zag stitches, and all the rest that come with the machine.

The second foot from the left is a zipper foot. It has two sides to be able to easily sew both sides of the zipper. Sometimes you can sew both sides of the zipper using the same side of the zipper foot, depending on the zipper. to use it, you need to line up the side of the zipper foot to the side of the zipper, making sure you stay away from the teeth of the zipper because that can break your needle. It gives you room to move the foot as close to the zipper as you want without sewing over it.

The next foot is a button foot. The plastic blue piece is where the upper part of the button goes. You line up the top two buttons as best as you can with the line of the plastic, change the stitch length on your sewing machine, and make sure it doesn’t move forward, leaving it to move side to side. That’s how I like to do it on my machine. I know a lot of machines have a setting that do it for you, but here is the old fashion way, just in case you ever need it.

The last one is a button hole foot. This piece creates the hole that your button goes in to close the piece of fabric together. Start by inserting he button in the slot on the foot and changing the setting on your machine. Every machine will vary with settings, so refer to your machine’s manual to get started. Most machines just need one step once the foot is inserted and the machine is set. Simply insert the button in a slot on the foot and then attach the foot to your sewing machine. There is a stop-bar that drops down; when you are sewing the buttonhole, the machine can stop (or be stopped by you) and reverse to sew the other side of the buttonhole. Some machines will even memorize the buttonhole size, making all of your buttonholes the same. Once your machine is done making the button hole, you have to open the hole for the button to actually go through. The easiest way to do it is take a pin and put it through the bottom of your hole and take a seam ripper and open it.

I hope this helps! Contact me if you have any questions! Thanks for reading!