Brother SA120 Gathering Foot

The gathering foot does not come with instructions, however here is how it works. Make sure the fabric you wish to gather is several times longer than you need for a finished project. First make sure the fabric you are placing the ruffle on to has a finished edge. Use the PICOT FOOT to achieve this. Then feed that edge into the groove of the GATHERING FOOT. Second place the ruffling fabric under the foot, lower the foot and begin to sew, making sure to guide the top fabric against the right edge of the foot while not exerting any pressure on the top fabric. Guide the ruffle fabric straight as you sew, but let it slip easily as you sew. Be sure to keep a sample of what this foot does with the foot in your sewing kit for reference. It takes some practice to feed the ruffle fabric evenly under the top fabric, so take your time and practice on scraps first. Soon you will get the hang of how the foot gathers the bottom ruffle onto the top fabric. It produces a wonder effect for curtains, pillows and little girls dresses etc. It's a great foot to have for specialty projects.

This is a great little foot to make gathers, and ruffles. It came without instructions, but having used this type of foot for years, you only needs to adjust a higher tension and a longer stitch length on your machine to make this wonderful little foot work properly. To make a fairly nice ruffle, finish both edges of ruffle first with a rolled hem or a tiny edge hem. Then place the strip needed for a ruffle under this foot. NOT in the slot of this foot. Then lower the presser foot and stitch away using a straight stitch. To attach the ruffle or gathered strip to an edge of the project you are making, Place the strip you want to ruffle or gather under this foot, lower the presser foot, insert the edge you want to attach the strip to in the slot of this foot. Guide the top layer against the right side of the foot and also guide the strip to be gathered underneath it. SEW SLOWLY until you get the right feel for it to achieve the desired result you need. It does take a little bit of practice, but a beginner can make beautiful gathers and ruffles with this foot. Now it is different than a traditional ruffler/pleater. It CAN NOT Make equal spaced pleats. Also adjust the tension and the stitch length for the amount of gathering you want. Hope this is helpful. NOTE: The lighter weight the fabric is the more it will gather tighter. Example lace will gather tighter than a medium weight cotton. But it does make very nice gathers, i use it in heirloom sewing for puffing strips.

While my item arrived without any instructions to speak of, it works great. I had to remove an attachment that my normal feet attach to to put it on (not easy to figure out without instructions), but after that it works amazing. I have read a lot of reviews saying that it doesn't gather very much, but when I increase the tension and lengthen the stitch all the way, it gathers too much! My biggest challenge now is finding the perfect match between stitch length and tension to get less gathers. But it works great, gather's nice and evenly and now that I know how, it's easy to use. Well worth it! (I am using it on a Brother Pacesetter for reference.)

This can be a handy tool but read the instructions carefully, to get tight gathers you need to adjust both the upper tension and the stitch length and you'll have to test that a bit to figure out what works best. However it's very easy to use, you simply put the fabric to be gathered under the foot and sew; or if you want to gather one piece while sewing it to a non-gathered piece at the same time, you feed the non-gathered fabric into the slot. I only used it once so far, gathering a single layer first and then sewing it onto the non-gathered fabric (I used it for a tiered skirt for a granddaughter and a ruffle for a matching purse) because I haven't figured out yet how to calculate in advance the degree of gathers needed to match up with another clothing part. If you do a single layer first, you can still gather up the fabric a bit more after stitching by pulling on the loose threads but it isn't as easy to do this as with the traditional method of gathering in which you stitch the flat fabric first and then pull on the threads, adjusting until it matches the other piece and adjusting to get even gathers. However, with the gathering foot you get a consistent degree of gathers. I still had to adjust a bit to match up the fabrics as I sewed the gathered fabric to the non-gathered piece, but that was easy and using the gathering foot first saved time. With practice I suspect I won't have to do much adjusting afterward. I like this foot.

I loved how easy this was to use! This is a great tool. That being said, I still don't use it that often because I haven't figured out how to get my final ruffle the size I want. If I was ruffling a lot of long strips that I could snip to size, this would be amazing, but for ruffling skirts of a precut size, I find it more of a hassle than it's worth. It's not the fault of the foot, however, which is very well made and functions exactly how it's intended.

Gathering foot. Hard to understand how it attaches to machine because picture is upside down.