I am thinking of buying an embroidery machine with at least 6 thread stitching. Do any of you have one or know which one is best? I have a Viking D1 and love it but would also like a faster way to embroider.

I have the Brother PR 620 and love it. It has the 6 threads and is pretty user friendly especially if you are already familiar with machine embroidery. They have the 650 out now I believe.


Babylock has one at the shop I do volunteer quilting at and it is very similar to the Brother and I have heard a lot of good things about it as well. I have a couple of babylock machines and haven't had any issues with them.

Not my thing, but you have a good time!

Ok, this is right up my alley! I was debating whether to buy a professional embroidery machine (multi needle) and use my Janome 6500 for sewing or buy a sewing/embroidery combination machine (which is what I did - a Babylock Ellisimo). However I did research for almost a year prior to making my mind up. For what you pay for one of the six needle machines such as the Brother or Babylock, you can purchase a used 15 needle machine from SWF or Happy. Stay away from any Chinese models. I contacted several professional embroidery sites (Stitchitize was one) with lots of questions. I am not certain if the 6 needle machines have a cap attachment like the commercial ones but that was one thing I was looking into.

My final decision was really tough. See I love to digitize and thought testing my designs would be so much faster without having to change threads so often. However, the features of the Ellisimo coupled with not wanting to turn my love of sewing into more of a business made my mind up for me. Also this was one time possibility for me since I was getting a cash out of a retirement plan and being on disability would never have the opportunity again.

Good luck with your decision. Research is the key.

I am so happy with my Dream Weaver (Ellisimo). We have bonded!

Some of the combo machines are selling for more than the machine that I have, it is a cross between a professional and a domestic. And it has the hat hoop as well, in fact it comes with a double set of hoops which if you are doing more than one run of the same thing it makes things faster to be able to hoop ahead.