I just made a big rag picnic blanket out of blue jeans, I didn't have any trouble and I have a cheapo brother xl2600i from walmart! the only thing I did was made sure that when I was sewing over a set of seams I made sure one seam allowance was one way and the other one went the other way! That way the machine wasn't trying to go over 4-8 layers of denim at the same time.