judyonthenet

I decided I need more productive hobbies outside of sleeping, video games, and blogging. I’ve enjoyed sewing in the past, and I always wanted to eventually make it a serious hobby. Since my mom’s sewing machine is kinda junky, I wanted to invest in my own. I’ve also been curious about embroidering, since getting anything embroidered is obscenely expensive. After reading Amazon and Joann reviews, it seems like the Brother SE-270D sewing/embroidery machine is a fairly economical way (even at $430) to get an introduction into embroidery, along with getting a sewing machine with a ridiculous number of features. Then Amazon dropped the price of the machine to $397.76, and with Halloween coming up and at least 4 other people agreeing that I should get this machine, I bit. Thanks to Rodney’s Amazon Prime subscription, I got the machine on Monday and tried it out immediately, so here are my somewhat-newbie-at-sewing-machine initial impressions.

My new toy showed up at our doorstop in a humongous Amazon box. UPS service was typically UPS-like: the box had a gaping hole on one of the edges. Amazon didn’t do much of a job packing it either, as they just shoved a little bit a butcher paper in which provided no cushion. However, the sewing machine’s original packaging was ample protection to UPS’s gorilla tactics.

I pretty much ignored reading the box and went straight to opening it. The first thing you see is the quickstart guide. Then it’s followed by manuals (including some FAQ on a CD-ROM), accessories, cords, more accessories, and finally the actual sewing machine. I didn’t do that much research on this machine aside from user opinions, so I didn’t realize it came with all sorts of stuff. There’s tons of different attachments and accessories I didn’t know it came with. They even included some sewing essentials that most people who have ever sewn before already have, like a seam ripper, a small pair of scissors, and even a spool of embroidery (bobbin) thread. So even tho I don’t have any sewing materials at my place right now, there were enough things for me to get started sewing. I didn’t know (and still don’t know) what most of the gizmos it came with are; there’s like 8 different feet (the thingy by the needle that holds the cloth down). It was very overwhelming looking at everything.

I would like to mention here that I’ve only been exposed to older, simpler, mechanical sewing machines. If you hear me oohing and aahing about pretty basic stuff, you have to give me a break, as I’ve never explored a sewing machine this modern and in this much depth. Also, I’d like to mention that I know some of the stuff I talk about is typical or available in cheaper machines and is not special to this sewing/embroidery uber combination.

The machine itself looks like any other basic, mechanic sewing machine, with the exception of the LCD on the front with Mickey Mouse next to it. (This sewing machine is Disney branded, so it can accept special Disney embroidery cards or something.) The embroidery attachment is this platform thing that attaches to the arm of the sewing machine, and the left side of the sewing machine has a card slot that accepts embroidery cards (proprietary format, of course). A flap attaches to the front of the arm to make a table for easier cloth sliding. Everything feels pretty sturdy.

We immediately want to start trying out features, so we followed the quick reference guide, starting with sewing. I’ve sewn before, so I’m familiar with the basics. I know there’s a turning thingy on the side that moves the needle slowly and precisely, I know there’s a foot pedal that makes it go fast, I know I need to thread a bobbin and stick it on the bottom, I know I need to thread the needle, and I know I need to use the foot to hold down the cloth. All these basic ideas are pretty much the same with this sewing machine, with the exception of the threading. Wow, the threading system on this thing is pretty crazy. Crazy easy, that is. You stick your spool in this cassette, wind the thread around the cassette thingy, and jam the cassette into the machine. When you jam it, the needle becomes automatically threaded. Like, I don’t have to play bullseye with thread and needle or use a threader; the thread is just already though the needle hole. It’s like magic. Seriously, I have no idea how it does it. We’ve only done it once, and it happened so fast. I’ll have to look more carefully next time.

In the upper right of the machine, a flap opens, and the special bobbin area becomes exposed. The flap even has two bobbin-holder spaces. We threaded the bobbin following the reference guide. We had some trouble getting the strings taut, but eventually it worked out. I think we overfilled our bobbin, but that’s okay. What’s new to me is that the mechanism to thread the bobbin is actually separate from the needle, so the needle didn’t move as the bobbin threaded. Also, buttons on the front are pushed to start automatic mechanisms (like filling bobbins), so you don’t need to step on the foot pedal as the bobbin fills. The box mentions that this sewing machine has a “simple bobbin-winding” feature, which I don’t really get. Putting the bobbin in and winding it doesn’t seem much different than past sewing machines. Admittedly, it is easier to wind out away from the bobbin than back and forth around the bobbin. (If you’ve never used an older sewing machine or don’t understand how I talk, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.) What is easier is that I don’t have to have the bobbin thread caught. In the old machines, you had to turn the side knob so the needle thread would catch the bobbin thread so it can be pulled outside of the arm. Here, you just drop in the bobbin, wind it, and then done. Very nice.

Okay, finally to the sewing. When you start up the machine, the LCD on the front lights up with your different stitch options. There’s 67 different stitch options, which blows my mind because past sewing machines I’ve had only had at most a handful. The LCD is a touchscreen, so you can touch the screen to make selections or use the buttons next to the screen to scroll through your choices. You can also adjust the width and length of your stitches with the screen. If your fingers are too fat or lack dexterity to properly push the touchscreen, a touch pen is provided for your assistance. We took our victim (an old undershirt that turned pink in the wash) and tried a stitch. It was some decorative, asterisk-shaped stitch, which worked fine and turned out nice. Another nice feature is that the machine has an automatic cutter. When you’re done sewing, you push the cut button, and the needle and bobbin threads are cut for you. Sweet. Now that we got basic sewing down, time for something else… let’s try buttonholes!

We grabbed an old dress shirt that was never going to be worn again after a year of action at Fry’s Electronics. We cut off the lowest button and decided to make a new button location between the top and the second from the top buttons. There’s a special buttonhole foot/measuring thingy that comes with the machine. You stick a button in it, it tells you the length of the button hole, and tell the machine how long to sew the buttonhole. There’s a buttonhole lever next to the needle that you pull down, and I think it uses the buttonhole foot to determine how to move the needle. We selected the buttonhole stitch, pushed the start button, and let it do its thing. It sews the borders, and you have to use a seam ripper to cut out the actual hole. It turned out pretty good. The button stitch is much trickier, as it requires precise placement of the button so the needle won’t smash into the button. Once the placement is down though, the sewing machine once again does all the work. Except at the end… apparently you have to cut the threads yourself and tie them up in a certain way, but we did something out of order and messed that up. Luckily it’s not too noticeable in the final result, which actually looks pretty good. Having never ever made a buttonhole or machine-sewed a button, I was super impressed with how easy this feature was to use.

Finally (for the day), embroidery. When you stick on the embroidery attachment, the LCD changes from stitching options to embroidery options. All the 97 embroidery designs advertised on the box (which includes 71 patterns + 26 monogrammed letters, but doesn’t include 5 basic fonts of alphabet/characters) are built into the machine, so no cards are necessary. The embroidery area is only 4×4 inches (4×6 inches if you go buy the extra accessory), but it’s ample space for beginning embroidery. We only had one spool of thread (the one it came with), so we decided to just embroider a word, since anything else would just end up being a white blob. For kicks, we went with “Fry’s” on the shirt pocket. Using the LCD, we selected the font, the letters, and had other options that we could mess with but didn’t. The embroidery frame attachment held the shirt taut, and the embroidery sheet helped us figure out placement. Embroidery also has a special foot to use. Once we had those figured out, we pressed start button, and once again, the machine went on its merry way. A couple minutes later, the pocket had a nice, clean “Fry’s” on it. It was slightly bunched up, which was expected since we didn’t use any stabilizing material to back the embroidery (a major embroidery no-no, but we took our chances anyway). Other than that, pretty good (and super easy)!

That’s pretty much all we did with our first day with SE-270D. It’s not perfect, as I do have some gripes already.
1) I’m not used to the placement of the lever that lifts the feet. In all the sewing machines I’ve used in the past, the lever has been directly behind the needle. In this machine, it’s little more to the side on the right. It messes up my flow because I reach for the back and nothing is there.
2) I don’t like the foot pedal response time. It seems to lag a little, like taking a half-second or second to stop after I’ve taken my foot off the pedal.
3) I wish it came with a case or an option to buy a special case for this machine. It comes with all sorts of tiny little doodads that I’m paranoid of losing, and all the attachments take up quite a bit of space. It comes with this flimsy soft cover which just keeps dust off it. I can buy a case from brother, but it’s a standard case for all machines, so I still have to figure out where to put all these large accessories and attachments.
4) (not really specific to this machine) Software, card readers, and cards for getting more embroidery designs aren’t cheap. The cheapest option is PED Basic, which will only allow you to do very basic editing functions on already-made designs and transfer them to your machine, and that’s at least $130! To be able to create your own designs, digitize them, and transfer them to a machine will probably cost me at least $300.

Aside from the last issue, those gripes are pretty minor compared to the benefits of this machine. Anybody who’s looked into getting stuff embroidered will know that embroidery is a freaking ripoff, and to be able to embroider your own stuff is really nice hookup. I love how so many things are automated on this machine; it actually seems strange to me since it felt like I wasn’t doing anything for half the stuff. (Skill? Who the heck needs that?) The instructions are very clear; the manuals are practically textbooks on Sewing 101. Even if you lose your manuals, the machine itself has illustrated instructions all over to remind you of its crazy, thread-winding ways. It’ll hurt my wallet when/if I decided to go deeper into embroidery (which seems likely… even Kelvin seems pretty gung-ho about all this embroidery stuff too), but oh well… I guess I’ll just have to start my own embroidery business :P This sewing machine is a lot of fun to use, has tons of utility and function, and is a great buy considering it includes embroidery. Minor gripes included, it gets a 9.3/10 from me.

Hey, so Halloween’s coming up… any idea for costumes? :) I need some sewing projects!

New thing I learned today: Number of stitch functions is not the same as the number of stitch types. One stitch can have multiple functions (i.e. stitch 39 can be used for heirloom stitching and decorative hemming), so there will always be more stitch functions than stitch types.

I remember reading on Amazon that this machine had 98 stitch functions, but I could only find 67 different stitch options. Apparently, stitch function is a term that sewing machine manufacturers use to exaggerate their product’s feature set (similar to “dynamic contrast ratio” vs “contrast ratio” in HDTVs).

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