My Sewing Machines – Part 2: The Embroidery Machines

My first embroidery machine:

 

I watched the evolution of the embroidery machine with close attention for several years before I finally bought one. I was always stopping by my local sewing machine stores to see what all the different manufacturers of embroidery machines were up to, and what great new features they had been adding. And of course asking for demos of these wonderful new machines to see what they could do first hand. Embroidery machine technology has moved forward at a very rapid pace since the 1990’s. They haven’t advanced quite as fast as computers have advanced since that time but it’s close, since the computer control of the machines motors, steppers, cutters, and the robotic embroidery arm were the most important parts of the embroidery machines.

 

My first embroidery machine was a Brother PE-200 Snoopy Design machine. Brand new it was $1500, but I got it used for about $800 with shipping and I just loved it. I could have got the PE-150 or PE-180 models for less money but it wouldn’t have had the Snoopy designs in it. It had about 24 Snoopy and Peanuts designs and about 24 other designs built into the machine. All of the designs were 4×4 (4 inches square) or under in size. At the time that was the largest design that any embroidery machine could create in one field without special hoops and tricks. It is comparable today to the Brother PE-750D Disney machine. Because it was an embroidery only machine, you had to have a separate sewing machine if you wanted to sew something once you had done your embroidery. 

 

The problem with this machine and other smaller embroidery machines you might purchase is the built in designs or lack of them. To stitch designs other than what is built into the machine, you needed to purchase designs on cards that could be read by the machine directly for somewhere between $50-$150 each for 10-15 designs per card, or if you wanted to download designs from the internet or take some off a cd or design your own, you had to have a card reader/writer and a blank writable memory card to get the designs from the computer or cd onto the card and then to the machine. To get the box you had to purchase the very expensive software for another $500, which you needed anyway to digitize or resize your own designs.

 

Besides putting out all the money for the equipment, you have to figure out how use it all. Thank heavens for my husband and his skills on the computer because he did all of this part for me. He tried on more than one occasion to show me how to create and transfer the designs myself, but I just could not get it. 

 

It did not take very long before I had outgrown this machines abilities. It became apparent early on that as long as your design had only 3 to 5 colors like Snoopy or Mickey Mouse you were ok with the 5 x1.5 inch monochrome screen, but after purchasing a teddy bear card where each design had 15 to 20 colors per design, it became very difficult to figure out what color I needed and which part of the design was stitching next. So, with all the knowledge I now had about embroidery machines and knowing a little more about what I wanted in a machine, the search for a new machine began.

 

My second embroidery machine:

 

After much research and debate, especially on my husband’s part, I became the proud owner of a Brother Ultimate 2001 on Christmas Day 2002. Wow! This was such an upgrade from what I had that I was overwhelmed with everything it could do! This machine is a combo machine, and could do both embroidery and sewing just by removing the embroidery arm, so that was the end of my original little Brother sewing machine (It was moved to the attic).

 

From an embroidery point of view, it exceeded the little Snoopy machine at every turn. It had a large color touchscreen display making it easy to decipher a design with 15 to 20 colors or more. Designs were easy to load from a computer to the machine by using a normal 3.5″ floppy disk which I even finally learned to do myself. You could also still use your older design cards from the older Brother machines if you wanted. Designs could even be edited and resized directly on the machine using the touchscreen, something the Snoopy machine could not do, and don’t forget the larger hoop size it offered. The larger hoop now allowed for designs up to 6×10 inches in size to be stitched all at once in one hoop. 

 

From a sewing point of view, the machine was wonderful to use. It had a top loading bobbin and a sensor to tell you when the bobbin was getting low. It had many built in stitches and a ton of other features that my little Brother did not have. I was in heaven and it changed my sewing quality and quantity dramatically. Previous to owning this machine, my sewing always involved a fight between me and the machine. With this new machine, the fights were less and when they did happen they were less severe. This is when I truly began to enjoy sewing.

 

Life was good but then the Brother Innovis 4000D came out and replaced the Ultimate 2001/2002 model. 

 

My third (and current) embroidery machine:

 

Although I loved and still do love my Ult-2001 machine, the Innovis 4000D offered many new embroidery features that I wanted. When I purchased the 4000D in 2004 I paid  just under $5000 for it. This was quite a deal at the time as they were selling in the shops for somewhere between $7500-$9000 depending on what you got with it. Since the 4000D is also a combo embroidery and sewing machine, it was meant to replace the Ult-2001. But that didn’t happen, and I’ll tell you why a little later in the story.

 

From an embroidery stand point the 4000D did surpass the Ult-2001 with great new time saving features like auto threading of the needle, auto cutting and knotting of jump stitches, and faster stitching speed. It also had better precision in the stitched designs and a better bobbin sensor with a larger bobbin. A larger mega hoop was included too which let me now stitch designs as large as 7×12 inches in size and it had a larger/brighter touchscreen which was nice on my aging eyes.

 

Loading a design into the 4000D machine is now done with a USB memory stick or a normal SD memory card, which are very inexpensive and available everywhere unlike the older brother memory cards which required a special reader/writer and were very expensive to purchase. Although it will still take the older 3.5″ floppy or brother memory design cards if you wish to use them. You also can load designs directly from a CD-ROM drive plugged into the machine. My 16 gigabyte USB memory stick will hold thousands of designs and you can file them into folders to find easier, plus it is fairly easy to load the designs on to the stick from a computer. The new design software for the 4000D had improved in several places as well so I decided to pick it up too. The cost to upgrade the design software from my old version which I got with my Ult-2001 machine to the new version was $500. If you were not eligible to upgrade it was $2500 to purchase it new.

 

From a sewing stand point, the Innovis slipped a little in my opinion. The biggest issue I had with it as a sewing machine was the manual threading of the machine when you wanted to use a double needle. This is due to the auto threader. A feature that added to the embroidery part really took away from the sewing part. Without  having the cover stitch feature on my serger, sewing with a double needle is important to me in the construction of my husband’s shirts and other knit projects.  I just do not prefer to sew on the Innovis. Lucky for me, the Ult-2001’s were not selling well used since everyone was trying to get rid of theirs to purchase the new 4000D machine, so my husband decided that I could just keep both machines, one to do embroidery with and one to sew with.

 

Life is good once again. Really good in fact! I have a serger that I have loved for years, a sewing machine with fabulous features and a very fancy embroidery machine that does everything I want and ask of them. And if I ever needed or wanted to I could use either machine to sew and/or embroider with at the same time.

 

Over the last couple of years, Brother has introduced a few new embroidery machines but their features have not enticed me to purchase one over what I already have. I must admit  though that the built in camera above the needle so you see a zoomed in view of what you are stitching on the touchscreen is a cool feature in the new 6000D, but not worth coughing up another $7500+ for it. I also had a demo of the new Viking Designer machine recently that has a 15×14 inch hoop. Now keep in mind it does this by using a special hoop and tricks like making you sew half the project and then flip it around and then sew the second half. In my mind I can do that on my machine too by using my current 12″ hoop without the tricks.

 

In conclusion:

 

As you can see, I really like the Brother embroidery machines. I have tried and read and researched the pros and cons of all the other brands through the years and I like the Brothers as they seem to have the features that I want and need. Keep in mind here that I am not a quilter, and if I was I might have chosen a different brand of machine like the Viking #1 which was a beautiful sewing and quilting machine, but I never felt it had the embroidery capabilities of the Brothers. Today looking at the quilting features of the new Brother Innovis 6000D Quattro I think I would still choose the Brother even if I was a quilter, but I wouldn’t have 10 or 15  years ago as several other brands of embroidery machines back then had better quilting features than the Brothers of their day. 

 

Now as you are deciding to purchase an embroidery machine for yourself, you need to decide what you’re going to do with it. Would you be limited by the features of the smaller less expensive machines? Will you be quilting more than sewing? Do you just want to try this as it might be a passing thing for you and a little machine will work just fine as a starter machine? Or, are you in this for the long haul and a larger fancier machine would be money better spent? One note I would like to make here is that if you don’t require the support of a dealer for help and classes you can do some digging on the internet and ebay and get a new or nearly new embroidery machine for thousands of dollars off of the retail (dealer) price. They will still have the remainder of the factory warranty. I personally have never lived close enough to any dealer for support so I have always searched out a deal to purchase my machines.

 

Coming up next week: Part 3 and the Art of Embroidery.

My Sewing Machines – Part 1: The Beginning

Someone asked in one of my previous posts comments what current equipment I was using was in my sewing studio. I thought about this awhile and I decided that it would be better to delve into this question a little deeper and not only answer the question of what I currently use but why I currently use it. It will also give a good overview for anyone considering purchasing their own embroidery machine and the many joys, pitfalls, and costs of ownership of this type of equipment.

 

This information will be broken into several parts and posted over the next several weeks. It is a lot of information to get typed up and will be a lot of information for the reader to digest. I hope it is helpful to some of my readers.

 

This will probably be more information than you wanted to know, but as long as I’m telling the story, I thought the beginning was a good place to start.

 

My mother taught me to sew starting at age 8 through a series of 4-H projects. If you don’t know what 4-H is you can check it out here. As a kid with very little interest in sewing, it was no fun and I struggled through the projects. As I was doing the projects I thought to myself, my mom is an excellent seamstress, so why did I have to learn? Couldn’t she just sew it for me? I also knew that I was going to be a professional when I got older and of course, I would never have to sew for myself. I would be able to pay someone to do that for me. It sounds like famous last words doesn’t it? I was young and naive of course! Every year before the new school year started, my mom would sit us down with the pattern book and we would pick out a school wardrobe for that year and she would start sewing. Mom would do her best to try and get us involved in this sewing, but it was easier to say, “No Mom, you just do it and I will fix dinner”, or do the laundry or whatever else so I didn’t have to sew anything myself.

 

It was my first trip to a big and tall store that got me sewing. My husband and I had just married and we were going to school, and poorer than church mice, and he needed dress shirts for work. I did not even have a sewing machine at the time or really know what to do with one, but after laying out that kind of money for a few of his dress shirts, I decided I wanted, no make that NEEDED to be a seamstress.

 

My husband purchased me my first machine as a Christmas gift that year. It was not the smallest Brother sewing machine they made at the time, but it was the next step up from the bottom of the line model. I was so excited to get it! A few days later my mother in law called and said she was getting rid of her serger and sewing box and asked if I would like them. Yes! The serger was a three spool, and any thing was better than what I had which was nothing. Sergers also cost a lot more than a sewing machine did at the time so I was very grateful to have one. Her sewing box was filled with many notions, pins, needles, bias tape, buttons, etc. so I was on my way. At the time all of my sewing equipment was stored in the living room coat closet of our tiny apartment but I made do with what I had. 

 

The next big help for me in my sewing endeavors was a part time job I got at the $2 fabric store. I got the job just for the extra money, telling them that my sewing skills were not very good, but they hired me anyway. I loved the job and enjoyed cutting fabric all day and talking to the customers about what they were going to make with their purchases. The other ladies that I worked with at the store were all so helpful and gave me great sewing advice too.  The store had inexpensive fabric and the employees got a discount on everything and thus became the start of my fabric stash. The store also gave free fabric and notions to make projects for the store to display. After being displayed in the store for 30 days, the display projects were yours to take home and keep. I made all kinds of fun stuff for the store displays that I would have never spent my own money on.

 

Once our schooling ended and we started our full time jobs we moved to a bigger apartment. With that my sewing equipment was moved to a larger closet in the spare bedroom. My ingenious husband got me a folding table that looked like an ironing board that fit in the closet. With my sewing machine on one side and the serger on the other, plus shelves on the side, my first sewing room was born. 

 

While out Christmas shopping one day, we saw a demo of the Viking Huskylock 1001L sergers from Husqvarna and I was in love with the 4th and 5th spools, differential feed, auto thread tensioning, and all the other great new features it had over my old 3 spool model. After listening to the lady’s sales pitch, we told her we would love one but just could not afford the machine at just under $3000. She told us if I did not mind a used one, that after the demo was over, she was instructed to sell the demo models at a discount, and would sell me one for less than the regular price. I was thrilled this and agreed to purchase the demo model for just under $2000 with very little use on it. It is the same serger I am still using today. Over the years, I have looked at the new models of sergers as they came out and debated about an upgrade, but decided against it since the only feature that I would gain is the cover lock stitch.

 

Serger and sewing machine technologies don’t seem to move very quickly forward as it turns out.

 

Speaking of sergers there are two types of sergers you can purchase. There is the $200 kind at discount store like Wal-mart or the $1500+ kind at a sewing machine shop. If you are a casual sewer the $200 models will probably work for you for occasional use, but if you are serious about sewing your money will be better spent on the more expensive models as they are built better, work better and will last you for a long time. My Viking serger I mentioned above it over 20 years old now and I haven’t had a single problem with it in all those years.

 

I continued to use my little Brother sewing machine to sew curtains, sleepers, pants, shirts, bedspreads, comforters, etc. for many years until the arrival of the embroidery machines. 

Why Fight It?

This shirt and fabric were meant to have the Red Baron embroidered on it, but I sure fought that fact.

 

I have another piece of blue with clouds in my stash that is meant to have the Red Baron on it too, and I don’t want two shirts that are so similar with the same design on them. When we went to visit my parents though, I grabbed the first piece of fabric I found in the stash that was washed and ready to use. I wanted to cut out a shirt while I had Mom handy to help me adjust the sleeves on my pattern. With that, this shirt came to be.

 

I have spent quite a bit to time pondering and studying this shirt, trying to come up with something else to embroidery on it. All the designs I looked at were just not quite right.

 

I finally gave up the other day and just stitched the Red Baron on the shirt.

 

When I told my husband I was giving in and stitching the Red Baron, after showing him many designs that would work on the shirt, he said. “Good, it’s about time you picked that design.” So it looks like both of us knew all the way along that it was meant to be, and as you can see from the picture, Snoopy as the Red Baron looks great on the shirt.

 

I console myself about the other piece of fabric in my stash by telling myself that this shirt will be worn out by the time I get that shirt made. By knowing that, I will not have two similar shirts, and who knows about the other piece, it may become something for the nieces and nephews. We will just have to see.

Darth Vader

My husband is really excited about this shirt, although you will never hear him say it out loud. I have finally made him a shirt with Darth Vader embroidered on it. He digitized the design many years ago, and I have stitched the design on a shirt for a nephew who is into Star Wars, but not one for him. The design stitched out great. All those years ago for the nephew, I reduced the size to fit in the 4X4 hoop and the design lost some of it’s detail. On my husband’s shirt, I stitched the design the size he digitized it and the detail adds to the uniqueness of the design. 

 

I had the fabric for this shirt in my stash. I had purchased it several years ago not really knowing what would make out of it, but it was such a beautiful piece of fabric, I could not leave it at the store. I am glad that I did not pass it up. It sewed up beautifully, with no hassles. Luckily, I purchased plenty of this fabric and have more for another shirt or some other project. I am also happy to have at least some yardage out of my stash. So, the question is should I purchase fabric like this piece that is a good deal and a nice piece for later use and have it live in the stash for a little while, or pass it up because my stash is already overwhelming? I also tried some new interfacing I purchased the last time I was at a real fabric store. It was expensive but I had a coupon. This interfacing is heavier than I usually use but it ironed on great and seem to be a good interfacing. I will have to get some more the next time I have a coupon or it is on sale. 

 

I am pleased with this shirt and its construction. The only thing I would change on it is moving the design a little closer to the buttons, but too late now, and it does not look bad at all the way it is. The final test is to see if the husband likes it on. Sometimes the wearability factor is a problem. I will make him a shirt that looks fine, but he just does not like to wear it. I do know one thing though, if he decides that he does not like the shirt, my little brother will be happy to wear it for him. 

 

P.S. The Darth Vader shirt is wearing well. Now, my husband has to make the hard decision, Buzz or Darth. 

 

 

 

 

Finishing a UFO

While digging through my stash, I came across this yellow shirt all cut out and ready to sew. It has been at this stage for years. A long time ago, I purchased a denim skirt and wanted a yellow shirt to wear with it. I purchased the fabric and cut it out, but the sewing part just never happened. I don’t remember why the shirt was never completed, so when I found it in the closet, I decided to stitch it up. Unfortunately, it was cut out so long ago that my sloper pattern was not at the same stage that it is now, so as I started to sew, I was very unsure what my end result would be.

 

For the most part, I am happy with the results. The collar gave me some grief, trying to get it to lie flat. I sure like the changes I have made to my pattern since this shirt was cut out. In the day when this shirt was cut out, I was happy with just a plain yellow shirt, but not now with my embroidery machine. I embroidered Mickey Mouse on the shirt because I thought he would would be fun on the yellow, and I need something besides Snoopy in my wardrobe.