Border Guide Foot

A Q&A With Martin.

So you’ve got a lot of feet. No I’m not talking about the ones you’ve got attached to your ankles. I’m talking about the ones for your sewing machine. If you’re like me, your table looks a lot like this when deciding on the right foot to use.

And quite honestly, I don’t know what half of them are used for—ok fine, less than half but I’m learning. So instead of confusing those like me by overwhelming them with an encyclopedia of different feet and all their uses, I’ve decided we’ll take this slowly and start with just one in particular. I sought the opinion of someone who happens to have quite the expanse of knowledge in this area—Martin Catenhauser, from the downtown store—and this was the result…

What’s your favorite foot? 

Oh that’s a tough one. I really love so many different ones. But if I had to say my favorite foot right now, I would have to say the Janome border guide foot.

What’s a border guide foot?

It’s used with decorative stitching. When you want to make a row of decorative stitches, and you want to ensure that your next row is equidistant from the previous row, a border guide foot can make this extremely easy to do. If you refer to this picture:

As you can see, this person is trying to sew the yellow decorative stitches in-between the blue ones. With the border guide foot, all they have to do is keep the previous row of yellow stitches (the one’s on the left) inside the red guide lines as they sew. This will ensure that the new row of stitches stays the exact distance away needed. When sewing with it, you don’t need to look at the needle, instead you look at the previous row, and simply keep it inside the red guide lines as you go.

Wow, that look great! What sort of projects could you use this for? 

Well anything you’d use decorative stitches for really. I’ve seen it used on throw pillows, Halloween costumes, or Christmas stockings.

What machines is this foot compatible with?

It’s made by Janome, so it’s compatible with every Janome sewing machine.

It seems pretty fancy. How much does this foot cost? Like a million dollars?

No, it’s actually only $23.99

So there you have it. And if you need some more information on the border guide foot, here’s a video explaining it as well.

Thanks for reading!