Ruler Toe Adaptation for Bernina

This post has been updated, see the bottom of the post!

In my quest to help folks enjoy free motion quilting and introduce using long arm rulers on domestic sewing machines for fabulous quilting designs, I have been guilty of creating foot envy among quilters who don't have a Janome machine, Janome-compatible machine, or other machines with a ruler toe available.

A regular FMQ foot on left, and the Janome Convertible FMQ foot set, plus the ruler toe on right.

Bernina users have been the most affected, and with good reason, Bernina usually has one or more feet for every technique out there. They are like the Imelda Marcos of sewing machines! Bernina even has fabulous little organizers for all their feet, like a tiny closet.


I still have hope that Bernina will come out with their own ruler toe soon, because they make such great sewing machine feet. If you own a Bernina, don't forget to email their customer service and ask them about it.

But in the meantime, quilters are resourceful folk. I've had readers tell me about gluing a washer or O ring onto a free motion foot and yesterday I received this comment on the blog:

Bonnie CulbersonSeptember 25, 2014 at 4:07 PMHi Amy, I am happy to report that I bought the Janome Convertable Free Motion Set and the #75 Shank for my Bernina 710. My DH filed a small place on the Janome part and made it fit my #75 Shank! I added the Janome Ruler toe and it works like a dream! I am so excited to get started. Now I just have to buy the rulers to start practicing! Thanks so much for you informative blogs! I am so inspired!

I wanted to pass this along to you. To be clear, she filed the Janome foot, or rather part of the shank. I like this as I am loathe to recommend something that would alter your Bernina.

So if you are handy, or you've access to a handy person, you might want to consider this route to getting a ruler toe for your Bernina. If you try it, update me on how it's working for you.

Update! We now have a tutorial for using the Janome Convertible Free Motion Foot Set and ruler toe on Berninas here: Ruler Foot for Berninas: A Tutorial.

7 comments:

  1. Okay, so how *much* filing and how fiddly an operation is it? Any idea? :) I did the O-ring thing, but I'd be even happier with a real ruler foot!

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    1. Sorry, no idea. I sent her a message via Google+ since she’s a no-reply blogger and that’s where her Blogger profile led me, asking more questions. Hopefully she’ll respond. I bet it wasn’t too hard.

      I also *think* she used the low shank version of the Janome Convertible Free Motion Foot set.

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    2. Thanks, Amy. I'll hope she gets back to you soon. I'd love a few more details! :)

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  2. I am able to use the Janome FMQ feet on my Pfaff Expression 2.0 EXCEPT the ruler toe. It has a "collar" on the top of the end that attaches to the shank that attaches to the machine. I've modified the Pfaff foot so it doesn't hop, but wish I could use the ruler toe. Boo hoo!

    Thank you for your quest so we can all use the Janome FMQ set. I'll try the O ring thing on the foot and see what happens.

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    1. Hmmm....I'm trying to visualize the issue. Send me a picture?

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  3. Hi my quilting friends, I free motion quilt on a Pfaff 2027. I purchased the low shank Janome foot set several weeks ago but had not used the ruler foot until today. My DH modified the foot by filing a notch for the IDT mechanism behind the Pfaff needle bar. With that done the needle is now neatly centered in the ruler foot and all works well. The IDT still impedes the ruler at certain angles,but with practice, this could become addicting. Thank you for all your wonderful instruction Amy, and all the friendly visiting from the rest of you! I have pictures to show the modifications for a Pfaff if anyone is interested. I am super new to reading blogs, so don't know If I can post them or not, but email me at deannarakoz@ymail.com if they would be helpful.

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    1. Thanks Deanna! I'm going to copy your comment over to a post called "Ruler Toe Roll Call" for folks who might want that info while there.

      I have the same issue with the rulers behind my ruler toe with the Janome6600's upper feed from the Accufeed system, but I can work around it.

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