Hey! I love you blog. It's inspired me to get back into sewing, something i did frequently as a child. Unfortunately, that was all on my mom's machine, and I'm now looking down the problem of buying myself something beginner friendly that will be able to scale with me a bit as I level back up.

You're easily the person in my circles who's got the best read on sewing machines. Would you have any specific suggestions for machines to look at and put on a holiday wish list sort of thing?

Thanks no matter what, and best wishes

I have way too much to say about sewing machines. Generally, when helping someone pick a sewing machine, there's a few things that limit the conversation. First of all, I generally have them there, and we're only looking at machines that my store sells. We also have information like price point, how often it's being used, where its being stored, and how often it's transported to another location. We can find out what their feelings are about different brands and what accessories they want to get. Usually, after roughly 15 minutes, we have several models to choose from, where my customer can go into the fine details of different models within a similar price point.

I don't have any of that here, so I've now written three different versions of this post, all of which are very long and not particularly useful.

So here goes for round 4) Part a, the best machine for you is the one that allows you to make the things you want to make. The best way to make the things you want to make is to find a machine that allows you to do the things you most often do without frustration.

The best machine to grow into as one who sews (side note: it's really annoying that sewer and sewer are spelled the same) is one that will still be working very well after using it for several years. There's a whole lot of advice out there and on this blog about buying a used machine, but with a lot of old machines you just don't have a way of knowing that they won't cascade on you and have one part fail after another. You also can't tell if that will happen with most mass market Singer and Brother machines, so. I'd avoid all of them.

It's a common misconception that expensive machines are harder to use. After a certain price point, some of the expense of creating the machine is put into making sure that the machine feels effortless to use. As an example, my sewing/embroidery combo machine doesn't need to have the sewing tension set, because instead of telling the machine what tension to use, I tell it what fabric and technique I'm working with. It then sets the tension for the correct stitch. This is undeniably more complex than a wheel with numbers on it, but is much less effort to actually think about. Higher-end machines will allow you to customize a large portion of the machine, so that if you mainly use the same eight stitches, they're present and easy to find from your home screen. Less expensive computerized machines, where the maker shoved every stitch they could find into the machine to make it more attractive on the store shelf, often are very difficult to select a stitch with. You're frequently sorting through a huge number of unnecessary stitches to find basic things like your tricot stitch. Basically, if you give Brother $15,000 for a machine and it's hard to use, they really failed in their job. A good machine will make the everyday features very easy to use and front and center, and the less frequently used features will be present and out of the way until you need them.

In some ways, you can tell how long of a life a machine is expected to have by how willing companies are to stand behind it. In addition to checking the manufacturer's warranty, see if any of your nearby dealers who sell it are willing to sell an extended warranty or a protection/replacement plan for it. For example, at my old job, we'd sell protection plans for all of our machines except Singer machines. Singer machines broke too often for us to not lose money on a service contract, as the cost of service and parts was invariably greater than the cost of the contract. Yes, most machines have 10 years warrantied on manufacturer defects, but I've seen Singer claim that a problem wasn't a manufacturer defect because it only showed up after 15 hours of sewing, so clearly it was the customer's fault. There's no real effective recourse if the brand decides to do that, so see if anyone who isn't the brand is willing to put their name on the line to defend the machine.

Also, a lot of the entry level machines are internet models, meaning that dealerships are allowed to sell them at Minimum Advertised Price over the internet. Before buying a machine, find a dealer near you and call them to ask how satisfied people are with the machine and how often it's returned. Also, if you're near the dealership, many dealerships can offer you a lower than MAP price if you call or visit the store. They're not allowed to advertise the price lower than MAP (hence the name), but they're allowed to sell it for less. It's a weird situation but it's how dealerships work. So yeah, if it's a real store and you call to ask about a machine you might buy through their site, you'll often find someone willing to help you. (If someone really helps you over the phone, it's also not rude to ask if they will get credit for the sale since they helped you so much. This costs you nothing to ask and sometimes means the salesperson can get commission on the sale, so it's a free way to give a helpful person some money).

Almost all online sewing tutorials can be followed using the cheapest machine that my store sells. I also went through all of costume design school only using features that were in a basic computerized model. Having a really high-end sewing machine is not the norm and so most books don't expect it. Also, many books about sewing were written many years before really modern computerized machines existed.

A good machine for growing into is one where you have a good balance between being wide-throat and being portable. The more space you have to the right of the needle (the throat), the more easily you can fit bigger projects. However, the more space you have to the right of the needle, the bigger your machine needs to be. For someone with no specialty sewing space, the biggest machine I see that's popular is the Baby Lock Lyric (or Lyric-sized machines like the Soprano or Brilliant, or the Brother variants that are like 900qsomething; i'm super bad at remembering Brother machine names). Machines larger than that often don't get used just because clearing a space on your kitchen table is pretty tough. So that max size is those bbylock/bro machines, the Viking 10" throat like the sapphires and topaz, Janome Skyline series, and Bernina 500 series. There's a lot of machines smaller than those that could also be good grow-into machines, but that's my personal opinion for the max size.

You also will need to decide on some features that might be important. Embroidery (in a hoop) is a big one, but decorative stitching (no hoop) is another. If you're going to be doing a lot of decorative stitching and fonts, you will get more flexibility out of a side-motion feed. If no side-motion feed, a 9mm zigzag would be nice. If you do more utility sewing, a nice range of attachments that you can afford would be a good thing. These would be things like feet and binders.

If you want embroidery, and you're planning it for a grow-in machine, try to get a hoop larger than 5x7. Many premade designs need a hoop a step above a 5x7. If you're getting into embroidery, and you want to make your own designs, you'll also need to budget for software.

If you're on a budget more accessible to the average person, and aren't looking to spend over $700 on a machine, here's what I recommend looking for:

If it's a mechanical machine, how long has the model been around, and how many are still around today? This can be tough, because models can be renamed while still being the exact same machine. Entry level Babylocks and Bernettes, as well as some Vikings, are often made by Janome. This means a machine model might be traded between some brands. My best example of this is the Bbylock Zeal, which used to be the Molly, and was a Janome before that. If it keeps being used, it's probably a good model.

Sew on it if at all possible. See how it feels to use all the features.

Check which brands offer the same features, and what other brands are offering at the same price point. Janome has their own version of the Bernette B37 that doesn't have the Bernette housing, and it sometimes is $100 cheaper or more expensive.

Brother and Baby Lock have machines made in the same factories. If you like a machine, check to see if there's a comparable match in the other brand. They'll often be the same price but might be bundled with different accessories. Personally, if it's a Brother that doesn't have a Baby Lock equivalent, I'd really check reviews before buying.

If you're going to grow into it, see how easy it is to do buttonholes. You'll probably want to do them in the future. Not only how easy it is to do one, but to do several identical ones.

If you're talking to a salesperson, tell them you're looking to grow into it. Depending on your business, they can sometimes offer different kinds of deals for that. For example, if I'm selling something that comes with a bundle, I can see if I can substitute free thread, which will be used up in the next 2 years, with forged scissors that can be sharpened and last you 10 years. We can't always make huge financial changes, but telling us what you're looking for can allow us to make what changes we can to help it suit your needs. Sometimes people don't want to tell us everything about what they want because they think it'll be a sign of weakness that we'll use to rip you off. The fact is that in most sales, the customer will find the machine that they want, and all we did was allow them to see the features they need. The customer knows what they want and will buy what they want. We don't need to do skeevy tricks to force them into a machine they don't want. Give us that information. We're here to help.

If you have a <$700 budget and you need a computerized machine, the Janome i forgot the numbers but I think it's the one above the 3100QDCT is a pretty good entry level one. If you're quilting then the Pfaff Passport with the built in walking foot is great. If you're going mechanical to save money, the Baby Lock Zeal is a really good amount of features for hte price point, and I think is one of the best values out there. Bernina, Viking, and Pfaff usually use nonstandard presser feet, so remember that if you want to use specialty attachments in the future.

Larger budget and the Bernette 70 series is nice, especially if you want to later upgrade to a Bernina 400-700 series since the user interface is the same. Baby Lock you can't go wrong with the Lyric, Brother has the 3600something that's similar to the BBlyock Vesta if you want embroidery. I have a Viking Topaz 50 that I'm very fond of.

Anyway, if you want to narrow that very large $200-$4000 price range down, throw in some more things you sew and a vague price point, and I can get even more specific.

I have not had time to write this as in depth as I want, but here's a sort of casual framework:

For sewing machines, not embroidery machines, not longarm quilting machines, when you start throwing more money at the machine and seeing what you get.

first, you get better build quality, stronger motors, real internal frames.

machines start getting more complex computerization. Basic computerization isn't a big thing, but multi-design things and all that. Here's where some machines start saving your programming instead of reverting to default every time you turn it off.

machines start getting physically larger to accommodate bigger throat space

sensor presser foot lift, automatic presser foot lift, automatic pivot feature, knee lift

side motion feed. With side motion feed, you get much better fonts

At this point in the price point land ($2k ish) you start seeing the brands sort of split apart. At a lower price point the difference between a Bernette and a Janome is name, but at $2k you really start seeing the difference between brands. It's completely reasonable at this price point to write off an entire brand (or stick to a brand) because you don't like how they feel.

A full size color touch screen is expected at about this point. These machines often have so many stitches that there's no way to function if they don't have a touchscreen and a menu system.

They're still getting larger and larger. The exemption to that is Bernina, who has a series of body sizes and a series of features, and will slap those features in any body size. The 735 is big and all that, but the 590 has more features, in a smaller body.

Here's also where you start seeing specific traits for different brands. If you start looking for a specific thing (integrated dual feed) you'll see what brands offer that (pfaff, bernina) and which don't.

Now it's reasonable to assume that your machine is larger than god himself.

A 9mm stitch width is really a lot higher up on the list than you'd think, and I'll tell you why: we programmed all the 7mm stitch width things back in the ancient past, but you have to program newer 9mm stitches. So they cost money.

I'm very tired.

They keep getting bigger.

the inside of the sewing machine store is just one sewing machine, like how Sandy wasn't fightin the alaskan bull worm, she was fighting his tongue. the sewing machine store is just a sewing machine. the machines keep gettin bigger.

please feel free to message me if you would like deyails on any of these parts.