Thanks for the info. The birds are beautiful, great idea.
I have a small Brother machine that does a 4 in design and it has been great.
But Im ready to move up to bigger designs.

I bought a Brother PR650 and embroidery is ALL it does. I have never been as happy with any machine as I have with this one. I've had it 6 years, use almost daily and never a hiccup! That is when I realized the beauty of buy a machine that does one thing and does it well. It was pricey and at the time I thought over priced but I now feel like it was worth every cent!

I've been considering buying an embroidery machine and I want a machine that only embroiders. I have other machines to sew on. I'm going to look for the PR650

Gale, the work your doing on this quilt is just stunning. The birds almost come alive.

Finding a good dealer is a big important factor. So valuable. I have a Viking and absolutely love it. I won a Brother stand alone a few months ago and as soon as I got it, I traded it for the one thing mine won't do, make Disney designs. I made sure it did the designs I wanted, had more that a 4x4 and 5x7 hoop size, had some additional options like needle up/down, auto cutting, etc.

I also like the Babylock machines, I was told they get tested really well before selling them.

All of the embroidery events I go to have different, but the lates Brother machines. There are things that I like about Brother that my Viking doesn't have and vice versa. The same way with the software, I have Floriani's software now and love all of the free training, free upgrades, etc but there are things in my Viking software that I love too. Thank goodness some of those features Floriani is looking into incorporating into their software too.

Go to the dealers and get fact sheets on different machines, look at the features each has and then decide what you would really like to have that you may not have now. Even though I knew I wanted to do the Disney designs, which not all Brothers do, it took me a while of searching to find one in the price range I wanted but had the features i had to have.

I bought the Brother DZ850e, which I understand is the upgrade to the PE770. Yr right about the mono screen. Yikes I guess I didn't do my research enough. (quick decision maker that I am) The other thing I don't think it goes to sleep? like my janome...yet I really like many things about it.