SEWING & EMBROIDERY MACHINES

A few of my favorite sewing and quilting TV shows I watched have gotten me intrigued with those amazing sewing and embroidery machines with the computer screens on them.  With just a touch on the screen you can tell it automatically what size stitch or embroidery pattern you want sewn and so so much more.  Since my old, but like new Singer manual (not computerized) machine may need to be updated,(secretly wishing, so I can allow myself to get a new machine) I thought I'd do that long, wanting to do thing, research.

Since they showed these machines on TV, I figured the common, everyday person could afford these machines.  Wroooong.  I first called by phone to a sewing machine retailer.  She said they cost $10,000!  That couldn't be true, I told myself.  So I went to Folsom in person to actually see these machines.  I was mesmerized by them.  Unbelievable at some of the greatest things I've ever seen.  They were, indeed, $10,000 to $12,000 range.  They said they could give me a 20% off on those.  But still...really?  The one I wanted would be $8,000+/-, depending if I would pay cash or I could buy it on a 48 month interest free credit plan they had.  Yeah...right.  This sounds like buying a car, I thought. 

When I got home, just for the fun of it, I compared two machines from the literature the sales lady provided me at the store.  I also went on line to get the instruction manuals on both.  On the lesser expensive machine the sales lady showed me, she said I'd have to put a small snowman figure on where I would want the embroidery to start, whereas on the more expensive machine, it had a laser which did it automatically.  Wroooong.  The lesser expensive one had a laser pen where you would just beam it on the material where you want the machine to start embroidering.  I don't know if that was what she said to have me go for the more expensive machine or she just didn't know the capabilities of the lesser expensive machine.  I think the most amazing thing I liked is the automatic needle threader.  My Singer machine has an automatic needle threader but I have to put the thread through a hoop, over a hook and manually swing a small arm over to insert the thread through the eye of the needle and that didn't always work that well.  These machines just do it all for you.  Like I said, amazing.

Anyways, it's so amazing just to read the instruction manuals on line to see what these machines really do.  The more expensive machines, of course, had more built in stitches and memory where you could store your own.  The more expensive machine was too much of a machine I would want or need to handle.  Even the lesser machine was quite a bit more of a machine than I would need or want, unless I had a sewing business.  Of course, I'll be hearing from the sales lady within the week to tell me the prices have just gone down, since she took my phone number. 

I've even thought of just getting an embroidery machine only with large hoops and get a regular sewing machine which is computerized with over 600 built in stitches for about $500.  I'm still researching what an embroidery machine with a screen would cost.  I don't know if I want to do that.  The embroidery machines only still have a large footprint.  They would take up a lot of room and something you wouldn't have to set up and take down every time you used it, especially here in this apartment.  But it's fun to ponder the possibilities.

So on these very rainy days we're going to be having, I will have learned and enjoyed learning about these fantastic machines on line.  These manuals are over 300 pages each, so that should keep me busy for a while.