*lust*

[amethyst73]

A friend of mine has a combo sewing and embroidery machine.

I love embroidered stuff.

Am I completely nuts for even thinking about this?  Yeah, I know it's not this year's model, as it were, but it's still got a heckuva lot.

(I had been thinking about just getting a good sewing/quilting (no, not a quilter, but that's where the fun stitches are) machine.. then I thought about getting a good sewing/quilting with the intent of upgrading to a combo within a year if the dealer's upgrade policy was good.. and now I see this.  Hah, and it even has a free arm, which I thought at first it might not!)

Comments

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

The Janome MC9500 does have a free arm. What you're seeing in pictures is the machine with the accessory box still attached, but it can be removed.

http://content.janome.com/documents/File/ManualFile/Inst%20book%20MC9500%20%28En%29.pdf
Scroll to page 3-6 to see it in the manual.

The free arm doesn't look very long though, like it's barely the length of the needle plate area. This is fine for just doing hems, but not for some of the really awkward or bulky stuff like I've had to do for costumes.

That machine used to be Janome's near-top-of-the-line, and the top model they allowed to be sold on the Internet. (The company reserved some machines, like the MC10000 and MC11000, for in-store sale only by authorized retailers.)

If you're going to look in the direction of sewing/embroidery combo machines, look at Janome, Baby Lock, Brother, and Viking. Also, Singer makes a line of budget embroidery machines called the Futura series if you want a really intro-level embroidery capability. The Futuras are basically electronic sewing machines with a USB port; you connect the machine to a computer and launch embroidery software on your computer to make it run as an embroidery machine. (You can't run embroidery on a Futura if it's not physically connected via USB to a computer running the embroidery controller software.)

Baby Lock and Brother machines are identical. They're made in the same factories. The only difference is that they have different outer shells, and they have different pre-programmed embroidery designs included on the machines.

Sewing/embroidery combo machines tend to have all the fancy or decorative stitches you see as "quilting" features, plus even more. I've acquired two while I worked for that sewing supplies retailer: the Husqvarna Viking Rose and the Baby Lock Ellegante. I use the Rose for all of my regular sewing and most decorative stitching, and I generally use the Ellegante exclusively for embroidery and satin-stitching.