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.