The Creative Feet Pearls & Piping Foot: One Foot, 32 Techniques

An interview with Clare Rowley, inventor and founder of Creative Feet Where did the idea for the Pearls & Piping Foot come from? This story may sound a bit magical, because it is. It was 1981. Plastic pearls heated onto a string had just been invented and were being sold throughout the United States. But there was no way to sew them on by machine. People were gluing them, painting them on, or struggling with an old-fashioned zipper foot, which required the operator to extend their left index finger and push the pearls against the side of the foot. One slip and the needle could strike your finger. Then one day, a woman walked into A-American Sewing Center in Canoga Park, California at the Fallbrook Square Mall. She approached me and told me her story. What did she tell you? She was unmarried, without children, and lived alone. She had no one to help her. She had spent her entire life hand beading wedding dresses. Then her doctor told her that if she continued, she would lose all use of her hands. She held up her hands for me to see. Her fingers were frozen in the position she had held them in her whole career. The right hand gripping a needle, the left pinching glass beads. I was moved to tears. I held her as she cried. She had heard about my Satinedge Foot and how I had designed it for a woman born blind and deaf, so she said: “You’re my only hope. I just have to be able to sew these new pearls and make something to feed myself. I don’t know what else to do.” I had her sit beside me and try to sew with the zipper foot. She couldn’t extend her finger. It appeared there was no hope. I took her information and said, “I’ll see what I can do and try to make a foot that will hold the beads for you.” and this foot makes it so you can sew pearls right on the edge of veils without having to hold the pearls at all. What happened next? That night, the magic happened. I went to sleep and experienced a lucid dream. Not my first, and not my last. A lucid dream has three stages of awareness: you are asleep, you are aware that you are asleep, and you can act and witness yourself acting within the dream state. I worked inside that dream all night. I tried over eight different feet and they all failed. I woke up tired, but I knew exactly what to do. I went into the store and chose a rolled hem foot to modify. It took me about 20 minutes, exactly as I had done in the dream the night before. The first Pearls & Piping Foot was born. How old were you when this happened? I was only 19 years old when I invented the Satinedge Foot, then 20 when I designed the Pearls & Piping Foot. I wish I could recall the name of the woman who inspired it, but I cannot. I am now 63, as of the release of this blog post. Many years have passed but this memory is as clear as if it were just yesterday. I was working at my parents’ sewing machine dealership at the time. As with the Satinedge Foot that I created for Mary, people started talking. Word spread to friends. At that time the feet only fit our brand of machines, the US brand New Home, which was later absorbed by Janome of Japan. Did the design evolve from there? It did. After a while, bead companies began making wider pearls, both 2mm and 4mm. The original foot couldn’t handle the 4mm size. So I got out acrylic liquid and powder and began forming the foot’s structure from scratch. The challenge forced me to design the base of the Pearls & Piping Foot in a way that would hold all sizes of firm, round items. Zipper teeth, pearls, beads, rhinestones, cording, chain, wire, welting, corded piping and more. Soft items like yarn are round but can slide out. This foot had to hold anything hard or firm and round, and guide it perfectly under the needle without the Sewist having to touch it at all. In efforts to make everyone happy, I modified the foot even further by creating two different feet with only .10 thousandths difference from left to right, and then I made the needle area deeper and wider. Prior to my design there were no other feet in the world with a zigzag needle area that would hold round trim. The closest cousin to my foot is the antique welting foot, which has a small needle hole in the foot. This can be proven historically and my patent was granted as unique because of that fact. Braided welting and piping held perfectly beneath the tunnel of the Creative Feet brand Pearls and Piping sewing machine presser foot. The needle cannot get away from the side of the welt. What finally changed the production process? The discovery of Polycarbonate at DuPont and injection molding. That changed everything. We could finally keep up with sales. When did the foot reach its final form? The Pearls & Piping Foot remained a two-piece kit until 1994, when I changed it to have a sliding washer on the snap-on bar that made it adjustable, eliminating the need for two feet. This also made it compatible with the Elna sewing machine, right before Elna closed and became just a brand owned by Janome. Another huge change in 1994 was the invention of my four snap-on adapters that make each of the Creative Feet attach to all sewing machines. The only limitation on what you can do with the Pearls & Piping Foot is your sewing machine’s width, foot control, and needle position capability. What makes the Creative Feet Pearls & Piping Foot different from the copies on the market? No other sewing foot, despite names being similar to our trademarked Pearls & Piping name, performs like this foot. Do not be fooled by copies. You may wonder how sewing machine companies could copy me since I have a patent. This is because they didn’t duplicate, they copied. The design of my foot’s tunnel is unique and no other foot sews as well, because of that lovely lady who couldn’t extend her fingers. This foot had to hold the trim for her 100% of the time, no matter how wide the trim. The inventor of the Invisible Zipper even called to see if he could sell my Pearls & Piping Foot instead of the foot he designed trying to make his zippers easier to sew. I denied him that opportunity, because if a person bought that foot and mine, they would have bought my foot twice and I couldn’t lie. I remain honest and compassionate and would love the same from my sewing industry, which has betrayed me and Creative Feet many times since our worldwide release in August of 1989. One foot, 32 techniques! How does that compare to other sewing machine feet? Think of it this way. Every sewing machine foot sold by other companies does one thing. One foot, one feature. The Creative Feet Pearls & Piping Foot does 32. So when you buy this one foot, you are really buying 32 feet in one. 32 Techniques. One Foot. Pearls & Beads 2mm Pearls 4mm Pearls Beaded Ribbon Beaded Piping Inlaid Beading Cording & Trim 2mm Rat Tail Cord 4mm Braid Corded Piping 1/8 Inch Corded Piping 1/4 Inch Corded Edges Corded Pin Tucks Inlaid Cording Create Your Own Cord Create Your Own Trim (sewing trims together without any fabric beneath the foot) Zippers Nylon Zippers, open and closed Invisible Zippers Piping & Binding Double Piping Piping Quilt Binding Corded Quilt Binding Corded Quilt Binding with Decorative Stitches Corded Quilt Binding with a Satin Stitch Pearled Piping for Binding Gathering & Elastic Gathering with Thread Automatic Gathering Gathering over Cord Sew Round Elastic Rhinestones Sew Rhinestones that are Heat Set Sew Rhinestones that are Clamped Inlaid Rhinestones Edge Work Edge Stitching on the Edge of Thick Items like Bowl Cozies. Want to learn all 32 techniques? The Creative Feet Workbook and Video walks you through every one of them. A new edition with updated filming is coming soon. Stay tuned. See it in action in the videos listed below: Watch and learn as Clare demonstrates the Pearls & Piping Foot in the videos Watch Video 1 Watch Video 2 Watch Video 3 Watch Video 4 Watch Video 5 Watch Video 6 Watch Video 7 Watch Video 8 Watch Live Demo Watch Video 10 Watch Video 11 Watch Video 12 Watch Video 13 Watch Video 14 Shop the Pearls & Piping Foot →