New Machine!!
I've posted on here a couple of times about some problems I was having with my Brother Dreamweaver. The people I bought it from were useless, and some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced.
Brother was helpful but we still weren't able to solve my problems, and I was getting more and more frustrated - bobbin sensor wasn't working, when I was doing FMQ it would constantly get "stuck", thread was shredding no matter what I did, it was driving me bonkers.
I had been having these problems for almost a year, and the problems were starting to get worse. The fabric wasn't feeding properly through the machine, and it wouldn't sew over seams without me having to "tug" it through.
I told Brother in an email that I wanted another certified technician to look at my machine. I drove an hour away, explained everything to him and he started to laugh ... AH yes, you're one of "those" ... I must admit, my eyebrows went up about 6 inches. Before I had a chance to explain he says: "this is how your sales went ... you went in to the store told them what you wanted, and they showed you this machine. They told you that no matter how much sewing you did, this machine could handle it."
I agreed, and told him that I sew anywhere from 2-3 hours a day, and in the winter much more, and longer on the weekends.
He basically told me I had killed my machine. For the amount of sewing that you do (and most of it is FMQ), you should have bought a lower version and a long arm.
I was ticked (Ok, I was more than that LOL) .. to make a long story short, he replaced the feed dog unit on my machine (at their cost) I did have to pay for labour, and I paid for him to do a full / thorough maintenance / cleaning on my machine.
And since I wasn't about to stop quilting, and I can't afford to replace the feed dog unit every 2 years, I went out and bought the husqvarna platinum Q160
Setting this up was not fun LOL but I finally got it up and running ... and then I did some sewing and oh boy ... I feel like I am learning all over again!
I was so good at FMQ on my machine hahahahaha ... I can still do it, but I don't have all the bells and whistles (cutter, threader, etc) so the cheating and short cuts I did on my brother can't be done on this one. And it sews much faster!!!
Lots of practice coming up over the winter!