Embroidery Sewing Machines

[Polgara2]

DD1 wants a sewing machine and as she is doing her gcse textiles and very into embroidery I am looking for the impossible I think - that is a not too expensive machine that will do embroidery!

Have seen two machines on a website called Overstock.com which are refurbished and around £150. Brother XR9000 and Brother SQ9000.

Has anyone any experience of these machines as I have absolutely no idea whether they are a) any good or b) well priced.

Many thanks from a very non-crafty Mum

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I've got a Bernina Artista 180 with the embroidery module and while it is brilliant I still use the freehand embroidery ie feed dogs down and a darning foot the most - preprogrammed motifs are lovely but not as flexible and fun as drawing it yourself. I did a C&G course and we hardly used pre programmed stuff at all - I'd agree w Butterfly completely.

I have a Janome Memory Craft 9000. I bought it off ebay for the bargain price of 400 pounds a few years ago just after christmas.

absolute bargain and works very well. you really do need lessons to use the embroidery stuff.

I do quite a bit of freestyle machine embroidery using my standard machine, & prefer that too.

If shes serious about this as a career, maybe a bit of industry advice.....I also worked for many years as a designer specializing in embellished clothing (embroidery etc) & ran the show for most of that, when it came to hiring & firing applicants who had a good solid understanding of all aspects of design & making clothes from scratch had the edge by far, so from my experience you'd do her far more favours buying her a good embroidery stitch book & letting her learn from scratch & then freestyle with any good basic machine before moving onto an embroidery machine

Thanks everyone for the good advice and suggestions!

Thebutterflyeffect - ok will give those machines and website a miss.

Will go for good basic machine then.

Rockinhippy - that useful to know thank you - she does already do freehand embroidery (well she has only just started but is keen and good!) sow she can continue with that instead and will tell her your advice.

Right off to see what's in the sales - wish me luck

Thanks everyone for the good advice and suggestions!

Thebutterflyeffect - ok will give those machines and website a miss.

Will go for good basic machine then.

Rockinhippy - that useful to know thank you - she does already do freehand embroidery (well she has only just started but is keen and good!) sow she can continue with that instead and will tell her your advice.

Right off to see what's in the sales - wish me luck

Oopsy

Hi Rockinhippy - can you tell me what basic machine you would recommend for free-style machine embroidery. I went on a 3 day course recently and I borrowed the teacher's expensive Bernina 1008 machine. I don't want to spend that kind of money but many on the course found that their machines couldn't cope with the speed of the free style embroidery with threads & needles snapping. So if you could recommend a good model I would be very grateful! thanks.