User:Clarerowley
About Clare Rowley Clare Rowley was born in southern California in 1963 where she invented a line of sewing machine presser feet she named Creative Feet. Creative Feet
She had prior nursing experience that helped her understand better how to serve the handicapped with their sewing needs and was a sewing machine mechanic trained in both industrial and home sewing machines. She taught classes in Machine Use instruction in addition to garment construction, quilting, industrial sewing and free-motion embroidery also known as Thread Painting.
Clare was also a professional fine artist, painting anywhere from 40-100 paintings a day as a reproduction artist at Vanguard Studios in Calabasas, CA. Her art abilities combined with her mechanical engineering traits helped her build a line of products that continue to please and empower sewers worldwide since 1989.
Clare Rowley's first invention called Satinedge was designed for a woman named Mary in 1984 for the main purpose of sewing a satin stitch on the edge of a piece of fabric to replace the need for a Serger or Overlock sewing machine. Clare met Mary after her teacher at the Braille Institute in Los Angeles, California told her to visit A-American Sew & Vac Center, then located in Canoga Park, California at the Fallbrook Mall to see if they could help her sew independently at home. Mary was deaf as well as blind so Clare wore earplugs and a blindfold on and off for a few months in an attempt to understand how Mary experienced the world and her surroundings.
After modifying the feet provided by the New Home sewing machine company for their 5001 model computerized sewing machine using a grinding wheel and other odds and ends and then raising all of the stitch patterns, numbers and letters on the machine with acrylic for fingernails so Mary could feel her way around the machine, Mary began a tailoring business out of her home. A year or so passed and Mary presented Clare with a napkin she had taken from a local restaurant and explained that she wanted to be able to create that stitch. Considering that Mary was blind and deaf, they communicated using a digital machine where Clare would type and Mary could feel braille letters strike her fingertips and then Mary would type and Clare read the digital readout on its small screen. Clare told Mary that stitch was created by using a Serger and it has knives and loopers and was dangerous for her to use, that she didn't feel right selling her that machine and Mary's response was, "I know you'll figure something out." Clare did, she set out to replace the Serger and succeeded! This foot is capable of sewing over 27 different techniques including quarter inch seams, top stitching, edge stitching, applique and all without needing to watch the sewing machine needle. There's still nothing like watching Clare let go of the fabric and watching it sew all by itself!
Word spread about this amazing foot and the story behind its creation to Occupational Therapists and both Clare and her Father, Don Rowley modified more feet, cabinets and foot controls for many others. One OT sent a patient who was told to stop sewing beads on wedding dresses (her career) or she would lose all use of her already extremely damaged hands. She could barely extend her index fingers and was hoping that a brand new pre-strung pearl could be sewn down using a sewing machine. Clare showed her how she was pushing them against the side of a zipper foot but she could not extend her finger to sew them this way. After sending her home without a solution Clare was trying to think of a solution and dreamt the design of her Pearls & Piping foot also known as, Pearls N Piping foot, that evening. The next day she worked on the foot and had a working model for her to use within a very short time. This foot has been modified and perfected over the years and is the only foot that sews all sizes of beads, pearls, piping, cording, zippers and can gather fabric several different ways all without the need to hold onto the trims.
Clare was challenged by the design of her third Creative Feet presser foot, one she calls Sequins & Ribbon but it, like the other 2 Creative Feet sewing machine feet, does much more than that! This foot is the original Couching Foot and capable of sewing down all sizes and styles of soft yarns, sequins, ribbons, ricrac and the only foot that grabs hold of your elastic from beneath the foot so you don't have to stretch the elastic from behind! You can use it for lingerie elastic, waist elastic, round elastic and the fold over or FOE elastic as well as moving so easily that you can write with yarns and ribbon.
When it was time for Clare to release her next foot in 2009 she realized that there really was no way to make a free-motion foot for quilting or embroidery that actually attached to a sewing machine that you could see through. There was always some direction the fabric would be moved by the operator that would force the user to move their head and lose perspective if the foot was attached to the sewing machine so she changed her thought to a foot that didn't attach to the machine and came out with her Octi-Hoops! The Octi-Hoops changed Free-Motion forever and have taken a once thought of as nearly impossible technique and made it simple! There are many reasons these unique hoops work so well and when you watch a child color with the sewing machine safely and you can quilt even a king size quilt with your home sewing machine - with complete view of the fabric, you'll see what a game-changer these hoops are to the very tiring and elusive traditional method that caused bodily harm and leaves so many feeling they'll never be able to sew Free-Motion. The definition of Free-Motion is to sew without Feed Dog interaction. The user moves the fabric in any direction and the fabric is controlled 100% by the sewing operator.
This page will be updated as Clare also invented Stick and Rinse, a water-soluble InkJet printable sticker you can sew through, her Thread Dispenser, a thread stand that delivers thread to the machine with no tension and helps to regulate the machine's tension better than the machine was engineered to and over 88 different sewing techniques that so many have benefited from and there will be more feet and other products after this publishing date of August 2018, 30 years of helping people sew, quilt and embroider better, stay updated by joining her newsletter at www.creativefeet.com or by joining her at https://www.facebook.com/groups/clarerowley or watch her on www.youtube.com/cr8vgurl.