ArchaicArcane

First off, good for you for trying even in the presence of a lot of negativity. I doubt I would have ever gotten started with that sort of "guidance".

I am Brother certified and service their machines for a shop in the city. I also service all the other brands at home for my own business and some for that shop. Depending on the Brother machine, some are as good or better than their counterparts. The department store ones can often benefit from a look over because they sometimes could use some adjustments to make them more pliable. That said, that's not just a Brother thing, it's almost all department store machines. They're priced for a certain market and to get that extra bit of brand awareness. The only Brother machines I would avoid are the ones in the 60s - 70s range and that's only because they have a plastic cam gear and I haven't come across one that wasn't broken in the last few years I've been servicing.

Now - borders. I'm a Longarm quilter and a fairly new piecer. I am working on my 6th quilt this year. I piece so I can quilt. My first quilt was pieced and free motion quilted on a 1951 Singer 15-90. It had no borders and no plan whatsoever as to design. Binding was character building on this quilt. It still is. It's my kryptonite.

My second quilt was made for DH. It had straight borders. I had to remove one border while it was on the frame and remove about 2.5". I have no idea how I did that so wrong, but I did. For me, for some reason, it's always the shorter sides I have trouble with. The long ones are typically fine.

3rd was a bed quilt, straight borders. That one taught me to come up with a quilting plan before loading it. It was on the frame for almost 5 months while I decided how to quilt each portion as I went along. As a recovering perfectionist, I learned that this turns out to be the slowest way to quilt a quilt. This is also the quilt I ripped a seam 4 times on to try to get it to match better. I didn't stop until I finally stuck the seam ripper through the fabric. Now I try really hard to adhere to what the lady who taught me to sew and runs our sewing group says: "Can you live with it?" Sometimes I can, sometimes not. But the key (for me, it might not be exactly what she meant) is not "Do I love the way I stitched that" but "Is it the worst thing that happened to me today and what does it affect long term?"

4th and 5th quilts have mitred borders. The 4th is bed sized and uses one mitred border for the outside border and has 15 mitred squares. I have one corner that isn't perfect but I can "quilt that out" when it finally hits the longarm. The 5th is similar to the 4th top in a lap size but I modified it to practice mitres and to help me come up with a quilting plan for the 4th one. 14 of the 16 of the mitres are perfect. The last two I must have been asleep when I pieced them but now that it's quilted, I have to look hard to figure out which ones they are. The 4th quilt is the only one that remains unquilted at this point.

Lastly - thread and other myths. There are few facts and real truths in this industry. It's mostly opinion, preference and belief. Just look at all the shops who will tell people to only use X thread. Typically it's not because Pfaff, Bernina, Brother etc tells them that's all their machines will run - it's because they want the sales.

I have heard that museums are starting to recommend poly for surface design on quilts because the cotton rots and we lose the design. Today's poly is not the same as yesterday's poly. Many of the new polys break easier than their cotton counterparts.

It sounds like it's time for you to go out and develop your own opinions and preferences.