Nanamoms

I purchased my first embroidery machine, a Brother SE270D, about 5 years ago. It is a combo machine. I had an inexpensive Singer sewing machine which kept giving me problems and so I thought the combo machine would be perfect for what I could afford. I fell in love with both functions of the 270D. I knew nothing about embroidery...had only done hand embroidery in the past. I WAS a little intimidated by the embroidery feature but my DDIL just jumped right in and figured it out. Of course, there was a lot to learn about stabilizers, etc which has come with time and study. At first, I only used the designs that were stored in the machine but I soon branched out to downloading designs from on line embroidery sites. I now have so many, I would have to embroidery 24/7/365 to complete them all!! LOL

I soon found, however, that the 4x4 hoop was very limiting and it was especially difficult to embroidery on larger, thicker items. Sooooo, I called my dealer and bought the Brother PE700II...fell in love again! It is actually now my "go-to" machine for embroidery with its larger 5x7 hoop. I have embroidered so many things for family that I think they are "tired" of receiving embroidered gifts!!

I purchased a couple of embroidery/digitizing software....Embroidery Magic II and Sew What Pro. I also own Monogram Wizard Plus which is mostly a lettering software but has been recently upgraded so that designs can be merged with the lettering. I'm not sure that I want to really get into digitizing and the auto-digitizing features leave a lot to be desired. Manual Digitizing is a more complex feature and takes lots of practice (kinda like FMQ!)

I want to try some ITH (In The Hoop) projects and lately I have been downloading quilting designs and hope to use my 700II to do some quilting.

My sister owns the Brother Innovis 4500D and the PR650 (the big one) and she uses PE Design software. So yall can understand why our family has tired of all the embroidered items as gifts!!