So, that sewing machine thing.

[amethyst73]

I've spent the last couple of weeks perusing websites of the various sewing/embroidery machine makers, and I got to visit a Babylock store earlier this week.  I found out some things, and came to a few conclusions.

- Babylocks are nice, but the ones that do absolutely everything I might ever want are just more pricey than I feel comfortable spending.  I just can't justify spending $4K+ for the Ellageo and Ellegante; about the most I can go for without feeling super-guilty is the Esante (available around here for $2500-2800).  (It's not that I don't have the money, I just emotionally can't go higher than ~$2500-2800 at this point in time.) Which means I should maybe go back for a demo of the lower-level machines.

- I really don't have any interest in the licensed Disney patterns that seem to come as a feature on most (not all!) of the Brother combos, which means that they're just less useful to me.  (onyoukai, any inside info on the Laura Ashley line?  Any idea what the Innov-is NX800 is equivalent to? Cuz it looks like it would be extremely affordable.)

- Janome combos are really weird, in that they use only ATA cards for transferring patterns until you get up into Ridiculous-land of prices.  (The MC9500 I can get for $2K and the MC9700 I've seen online for $2500, but they're both ATA-only, which I'd really just as soon not have to put up with.  The MC9900, which was introduced just back in March, seems to sell for around $5K from what I've seen online.)

BUT...

I made the mistake(?) of letting my husband see the spreadsheet I've been building of machines, abilities, and prices.  He took a look at the scary-priced ones (which I had on there just for comparison, really!) and suggested I try looking at normal sewing/quilting machines (which I'd told him back at the beginning of this whole process I could get for only a handful of hundreds of dollars - Janome's DC2011 for example does a ton, is well-reviewed on Amazon, and is very affordable) and then look at separate embroidery machines.

Given that even the low-level Janome embroiderers have USB ports, and that I think there are some Brother embroidery-only machines where I don't have to take all the darned Disney stuff, this might be a reasonable way to go.  I still may not be able to get continuous hooping this round, but I should be able to get something that has a decent (at least 5x7, and I'm hoping larger) embroidery area, editing and combo-ing, and USB compatibility.  Who knows, maybe I can get a color touchscreen as well.

The other possibility is I get the Esante and live with it for a while, and possibly trade it up someday once prices on the Ellageo/Ellegante come down.

Either way, it'll still be a little bit before I buy anything.  I plan on looking at the Janomes next weekend; maybe the Brothers too - the stores aren't that far from each other.

And one of the Babylock store people encouraged me to wait till late August and contact her then, as she'll have been to the sewing machine tradeshow: new machines may be introduced, which can get people to trade in older (but still good) machines, the cost of current machines may come down, and machines whose boxes have been opened (but nothing actually done with them other than let people gawp) have their prices lowered just for opening the boxes.  So there's that.

Comments

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

The Laura Ashley machines seem to be fairly recent - or at least, I've never heard of them until now since they were released after I left that sewing machine retailer. (My inside knowledge is a bit dated, unfortunately, since I haven't worked for them for 4 years now.)

I'm eyeballing those Laura Ashley machines on Brother's website now and comparing them to Baby Lock, and I'm pretty sure this is how it matches up:

Brother NX-800 = Baby Lock Melody
Brother NX-2000 = Baby Lock Symphony
Brother NX-5000 = Baby Lock Ellegante 3

Janome's technology in embroidery combo machines has typically lagged behind Baby Lock and Brother, as you've seen with the fact that they are STILL using those stupid flash cards. This equates to more crap you have to buy to transfer and reformat design files.

The advice you got about waiting until late August is good. Tacony is pretty up about introducing new product and having reveals to show off. The company is very marketing-savvy, especially with the Baby Lock brand.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the matchup! That's about what I thought.

Yeah, the ATA thing is just. dumb. I'd have to buy a card reader, which runs around $80 on Amazon from what I can tell (if I'm even looking at the right thing), and is (as you say) one more piece of crap that I'd have to have kicking around. It would not particularly make me want to go find patterns online!

And of course every maker has its own file type: JEF for the Janomes, and PES + PEC for the Brother/Babylock ones. (And some format that begins with V for the Viking ones, I'm guessing.) From the extremely brief bit of browsing I've done, it looks like the commercial sites are pretty good about making their designs available in every single format that exists. It also looks like it may not be terribly difficult to convert from one format to another (I think I saw a site somewhere that could do it free, or it looks like there's a beginner-level $50 embroidery editing program which could import and export - the only thing there is it's gotta be Mac-compatible (http://sewing.patternreview.com/SewingDiscussions/topic/48008)).

Anyway.

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

If you're a Mac user and you want to make your own embroidery designs, then compatibility is really something you're going to have to research. From what I've seen, the vast majority of digitizing software is Windows only. I've honestly never seen one for Mac - I don't want to say it doesn't exist simply because I don't know, and absence isn't necessarily proof of non-existence.

If you don't have a Windows machine around the house and you don't have any interest in getting one (even a low-cost laptop just for dealing with Windows-only software in general), then one option to look into is virtualization software. This would let you keep your Mac, but you could simulate a Windows environment when you need to run software that isn't compatible with the Mac OS.

Different formats is also something to keep in mind when you're looking at digitizing software. Namely, proprietary software associated with a brand is going to produce formats for that brand. And then you are locked into that brand. Say further down the road, you get a new machine that's a different brand - you now have to pay for conversion software and hope it works. To avoid the whole conversion issue in the first place, you could look into software that ISN'T tied to a specific brand and has the ability to natively save in many different formats.

I use Embird with the Digitizing Studio add-on for all my embroidery work. It can save designs in pretty much every format out there. I generate all my designs as .pes for my Ellegante, but if I wanted to, I could open the original working files and generate them again in a Viking format for my Rose.