Sewing Machine Purchasing

Technology has made the sewing machine, once a high priced item, very affordable for most sewing applications. The only major decisions are choosing between a traditional or embroidery sewing machine and how powerful you require it to be.

The more power provides a quicker job and longer lifespan of the machine. Only a handful of companies compose a very large percentage of the sewing machine market. These include Singer, Brother, Husqvarna Viking, White, and Pfaff. All of these brands have a product range from the entry level to expert quality.

As with any buying decision, the history of reliability and warranty features are the most important considerations. Deciding where to purchase is the next step after deciding on the brand and model you want.

Buying from a local retail location offers the ease of returning a product that is damaged at the start or within its warranty period. You can save money purchasing from online stores or an Ebay auction. However, the money saved may not be worth the risk of the trouble you may go though if something should go wrong.

Sewing machines have more moving parts than the average electric device. The more moving parts, the higher chance of a problem during operation. My advice is to check consumer feedback sites like epinions.com and magazines like Consumer Reports so you can make an informed decision based on the experience and research of others.

Jeremy MacNabb is the editor of many online guides including The Sewing Machine Guide

Sewing Machines Save Money in the Home

The sewing machine is a part of a lot of people's life any more. Yet some of us do not think that it is a good investment. But once you sit down and think about just what you could do with on of the sewing machines now days you would realize that there is a large variety of things that can be done with it.

The new machines are compact and have a large variety of features with it. The features could include the different types of stitches and even the feature that would allow you to have some kind of writing placed on a garment.

Did you ever think that you could sit down and make a blanket, cloths, or curtains? Well it is possible with a sewing machine, plus it is not that hard. You could even get the kids involved with some of the projects that you would like to do. You never know the kids might even come up with a few projects that they may want to do on the sewing machine themselves.

You never know, but you may end up buying a sewing machine that you are able to do embroidery on it. Then you could even take on the tasks of doing projects for company's, such as jackets, shirts, or even hats. That is one little way to make a littlie money instead of giving it all to the large companies that are out there charging to do the work.

The sewing machine makes life easier and does save some money for many people. How, you may as. Its simple instead of throwing cloths away they may take the piece of cloth and be able to replace the seam that may have ripped out or if that is not possible then you could always make something completely new out of the material.

Some people have made carpets or even quilts with one sewing machine instead of throwing out the material. That is how some of the families are able to save some money by not throwing out what can be reused one way or another with just the use of a sewing machine.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.1-sewing-machines.info

Janome Sewing Machine!

Janome sewing machines are known for high quality and durability. They are also one of the most innovative sewing machine companies. The company is credited for many firsts and the ease of using these machines in unmatched. Janome sewing machines are important fixtures in many homes and businesses.

The Janome sewing machine company is based in Japan, but has American counterparts. But, the company actually began in 1867 when two men, William Barker and Andrew J Clark began a company that made the " New England Single Thread Hand Sewing Machine" in Orange, Massachusetts. They had much success with this machine and with their "Home Shuffle" machine for over 20 years. In 1960, the company was purchased and moved to Japan by the Janome Sewing Machine Company. The company got its name when it created the round 15 class metal bobbin system instead of the traditional long shuttle type. It was thought that this round shape made it look a lot like a snake's eye. The word Janome translates to "the eye of the snake". The company expanded and developed many machines over the years. They have been leading the sewing manufacturing field worldwide for years.

In fact, in 1970's, Janome sewing machines introduced the first programmable, computerized sewing machine available. The newer versions of these machines are renowned for their precision and the ease of use they provide.

If you are in the market for a Janome sewing machine, whether it is the Janome 6500 sewing machine or an antique version of these machines, you will find that they are made to be high quality and very dependable machines. The precision they offer exceeds the standard in today's market. And, the ease of use in the Janome sewing machine makes it a perfect addition to a home or business.

Mike Yeager
Publisher
http://www.my-sewing-machine-4me.com/

Organizing Your Embroidery Designs - On A Budget!

While there are many software packages out there that will help you organize and catalog your items (whether it be designs, images, music, etc.), many, if not most, are costly, confusing and yet-another-thing to learn.

Today I want to tackle the task of organizing your designs on the cheap. We will just use the standard Windows file system (though this can be readily done on a Mac). I am going to talk about methods of organizing, not any OS-specific functionality, so this can be readily applied to any type of file on any system.

So the first thing we need to analyze is what kind of designs we have, and what would be our best strategy for beginning to organize them. With that in mind, we need to figure out how many ways we can categorize them. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few possibilities right away:

• Few or same designers (One/Few particular company(ies) or your own)

• Many designers

• Design collections

• Genre or sub-type of designs (animals, flowers, etc.)

• Size of designs (We should make a mental note about these, since changing the size by more than 20% degrades the quality of the design, and from my experience, thats even pushing it).

Organize

Let's see if we can create some possible structures for the examples above.

Let's take the first case of having just a few different designers, or you digitize your own designs. If we are sure that the amount of designers is going to stay static and you will not be growing the number of different design suppliers, then it would make sense to start thinking about what kind of designs you have.

If you have a specific target audience, let's say you do baby clothing or pet items, then your categories could be limited to Boy/Girl/Pet type, Seasons, Holidays, etc. One thing to keep in mind as we start subdividing the categories is that you can get pretty granular, but there's a point of diminishing returns. What we want is the ability to think, "OK, I need a bib design for a baby girl that has a cute Christmas saying" and be able to know exactly where in your computer it resides.

So let's start building our catalog. We have, as examples, the following starting directories:

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Boy/Holidays/Christmas

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Boy/Holidays/Thanksgiving

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Boy/Holidays/New Year

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Girl/Holidays/Christmas

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Girl/Holidays/Thanksgiving

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Girl/Holidays/New Year

Notice how we structured based off the gender. If your business is less reactive (on-demand), then a variation of the above could be more beneficial to you:

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Holidays/Christmas/Boy

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Holidays/Christmas/Girl

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Holidays/Thanksgiving/Boy

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Holidays/Thanksgiving/Girl

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Holidays/New Year/Boy

[top-level]/Baby Designs/Holidays/New Year/Girl

The choice of how to subdivide the categories is very important, and can only be done after analyzing your own personal needs.

If our business is not as targeted, and we use many different sources of designs, then we have a different situation. What we need todo is, once again, look at our customer base and the type of work we're asked to do.

[top-level]/Designer 1/Holidays/...

[top-level]/Designer 1/Animals/...

[top-level]/Designer 1/Flowers/...

Again, this is subject to how you work. We could just as well do the following:

[top-level]/Holidays/Designer 1/...

[top-level]/Animals/Designer 1/...

[top-level]/Flowers/Designer 1/...

Putting it all together, we could have the following structures:

[top-level]/Baby/Bibs/Bunnies

[top-level]/Baby/Bibs/Bears

[top-level]/Baby/Bibs/Flowers

[top-level]/Bags/Fleur De Lis

[top-level]/Bags/Lace

[top-level]/Shirts/Holidays/Christmas

[top-level]/Shirts/Holidays/Halloween

[top-level]/Shirts/Holidays/Thanksgiving

[top-level]/Socks/Holidays/Christmas/Snowmen

[top-level]/Socks/Holidays/Christmas/Snowflakes

So there you have some suggestions on how to organize your designs, and keep things where you can find them.

Next column, I will build on this concept, and show you how you can tag the designs you own for easy searching.

Dan Wyszynski

Any comments you may have, please contact me at dan@embuniverse.com or through the website at: EMBUniverse.com

Machine Embroidery Designs

General information

Machine embroidery is a special type of embroidery, performed by special automatic machines, functioning according to the man's adjusted program.

This man is designer, constructor. He creates the embroidery program (design) - the machine operation algorithm, which can be in consequence repeated unlimited number of times. The machine following the given program, automatically executes the embroidery on material. In this way, the main features of machine embroidery are the absence of manual labor at the stage of outright embroidery, and the possibility of embroidery samples duplication.

The machine embroidery is a recent kind of activity, in contrast to manual embroidery, existing for thousands of years. The machine embroidery began its existence nearly 50 years ago and in 1980-ies the demand of the profession of machine embroidery designer began to grow. Nowadays the demand is actually as well. During the period of machine embroidery existence, its creation technology has changed beyond recognition.

The machines that once used as source of information the punched card, limited in speed and quality of embroidery, were replaced by microprocessor-based, highly productive, multihead machines with advanced technology equipment, optimizing the embroidery process.

The process of machine embroidery technologically consists of two closely associated stages:

The embroidery designing stage, or the construction stage of machine embroidery-represents the process of creation of embroidery machine program. At this stage are developed the construction components of machine embroidery.
The technical stage represents the direct embroidery manufacture by means of machine. At this stage are developed the technical components of machine embroidery.

Both this stages are at the same time quite independent from the point of view of manufacture, which helps to differentiate them and to mark out two different basic types of industrial activity accordingly. It is a question of enterprises that are specialized directly in program creation, or in materially embroidery creation. Each of these manufacture branches develops round itself a branching infrastructure system.

For example, nowadays there are a great number of producers of special program maintenance for machine embroidery, of embroidery machines and special concomitant equipment producers, of outlay materials producers, used for embroidery manufacture. Many companies, in accordance with machine embroidery branch needs are adjusting the directions of its activity. For example, the producers of textile dye stuff make special adjustments of qualities and spectrum, the clothing producers change the construction, adjusting it to the technology of machine embroidery manufacture.

Field of machine embroidery use

Historically the embroidery had, first of all, a decorative character. Nowadays this essential property favorable affected its use in advertising branch. We frequently see the embroidery bearing advertising-informational character, on clothing objects and other ready-made garments.

Machine embroidery as advertising; informational bearer

Embroidery can be an effective advertising-informational means, at the same time without loosing its artistic expressiveness. It is frequently used at trade marks plotting on the cloth, leather, felt, as well as on complete products, clothes etc. At embroidery it is possible the reproduction of trade mark of all color combination. The trade mark, plotted on by this method, frequently turns into fashionable attribute of article and becomes an organic element of its composition. It is possible to embroider on different types of clothes, including uniform, working clothes. The embroidery as characteristic index to any current of activity is widely used in many countries. Very often the firm workers bear the differential sign of their company. It can be a logotype on the head gear, on the front side of the sweater or on the back side of the jacket.

The cloth embroidery, on many indexes passes ahead of its ?rivals?, like serigraphy or decal decoration (transfer seal). The embroidery is more lasting, the steadiness of threads color is higher, the volumetric texture of embroidery confers more expensive and spectacular shape to the logotype. That is why most of the firms, dealing with advertising campaigns development, recommend to their clients the very embroidery. The embroidery can be performed on different parts of clothes and on different articles. On head gears (caps, knitted caps), sport shirts, shirts, tolstovkas, even on footwear.

Technical constituent of machine embroidery

During the cycle of machine embroidery manufacturing is applied different means and tools. However, starting from the availability of two basic stages of manufacture, it can be market two fundamental corresponding tools of machine embroidery.

They are:

The computer with appropriate program maintenance and peripherals on the construction stage of manufacture. Automatic embroidery machine with concomitant supplementary equipment on the technological stage of manufacture.

Let us list the fundamental information of industrial automatic embroidery machines and some supplementary special concomitant equipment. Industrial automatic embroidery machines according to fulfilled activity and principle of operation can be divided in two groups:

Universal automatic embroidery machines.
Special automatic embroidery machines.

To special automatic embroidery machines can be attributed the machines using not quite standard embroidery methods, machines that are able to perform embroidery on out-of-the-way places of complete products and on materials that are difficult for embroidery. To one of the most commonly used type of special automatic embroidery machines can be attributed the so called Schiffli, machines that allow making embroidery with the utilization of decorative cord, to cut through material and at the same time to process the cut by embroidery. These machines are mostly used for finishing of light and thin, translucent, fashioned and other smart cloth and articles made out of it. For instance, Schiffli machines are often used at wedding dresses decoration.

Quite recently it appeared a new interesting kind of automatic special embroidery-the so called no-thread-embroidery and automatic no-thread embroidery machines. The principle of operation of such machines has a remote conformity with principle of producing of needle-punched fabrics. It consists in the fact that the machine with a set of needles (24 needles) runs through the structure of the main (working) material the locks of fibers of special auxiliary material. The auxiliary material is laid under the main material. After the auxiliary material removing on the main material remains an effective, specific pattern (picture).

Nowadays the leader in production of no-thread embroidery machines is the Japan Company Tanaka. In 2001 fashion show in Berlin and Paris were presented impressive collections made with the help of no-thread embroidery on "Vari-O-Matic" machine of this company. To universal automatic embroidery machines are related the machines of lock-stitch with coordinate displaced frame holder which is meant for manufacture of embroidery with threads on classical and most widespread materials and articles. The use of such machines supposes some limitations in properties of used materials and constructions of complete products.

But these limitations are constantly growing narrower due to constant modernization and improvement of universal automatic embroidery machines and due to use of manifold auxiliary facilities and special devices. All known universal automatic embroidery machines are of lock-stitch type of machines and the structure of many parts of the mechanism has many similarities with lock-stitch embroidery machines.

The main parts of single-head universal automatic embroidery machine are column, case, frame holder and head. The case is fixed on column and consists of pole and cantilevered arm. Inside the upper part of column is installed the stitch mechanism. Inside the case is installed the main shaft mechanism. On the head is disposed a set of needle mechanisms with thread takeup and thread guide mechanisms. The head is able to shift from case in the horizontal position, engaging with the main shaft stirring up the needed needle mechanism.

This enables the machine to make the shift of the thread color at one embroidery run. The frame holder mechanism is able to shift the frame holder in a horizontal level in four directions from the active needle. The shift is made in step-type on coordinate according to given embroidery program. In this way the machine can make loch-stitches on material of different length and in any given order and direction, executing if needed the shift of working needle with the thread of the definite color. The industrial automatic embroidery machines can be both single-headed and with few heads and with corresponding number of necessary working mechanisms. The last are called many headed or multihead automatic embroidery machines.

Under normal conditions of embroidery all the heads and frame holders mechanisms works synchronously.

The basic indexes of industrial embroidery machines

Speed of embroidery.

It is expressed through quantity of stitches per minute. The embroidery speed can be adjusted both manually and automatically while embroidering. The optimal embroidery speed of modern machines oscillates between 700-900 stitches per minute. Maximum speed reaches 1200-1400 stitches per minute.

Number of working heads.

In modern multihead machines the head numbers come to 2-4 heads.

The size of working area or the maximum size of used frame.

This index is concerned with possible size of performed embroidery. It is expressed through correlation of length and width of the working area in millimeters and is regulated for flat and cylindrical frame (used for caps, sleeves, etc). There are spread the correlations 800x600, 500x400 and other-for flat frame; 360x75, 400x350 and other for cylindrical frame.

Needle quantity.

It is equal to the number of needles on one head. It is defined by maximal possible number of thread colors used at one run of embroidery. The possible needle number in modern machines is from 1 to 12. The most spread are the machines with 9 needles. Other important indexes are the noise and vibration level, the compatibility of machine with different standard embroidery programs, the presence of accessories, error of linear measurements of embroidery elements.

The accessories can be presented through different additional hinged device for automatic let-off of decorative cord or ribbon, broadened control terminal, systems of laser and video navigation of working area, additional laser trimers (device for thread cutting) and other.

The concomitant equipment can be presented through devices of embroidery evaporation, various press equipment for adhesive chevron and braid production, special cloth-cutting machine in the form of laser cutter-machines, that can automatically cut of or drift on markings on cloth, which is widely used at combined with embroidery applique?works production.

Resouces
http://www.StitchBank.com - Your #1 source of Machine Embroidery Designs!

Artur Cosicov. Embroidery Designs Shop http://www.StitchBank.com administrator.

Used Embroidery Machines

Used embroidery machines can be the most cost effective for novice embroiderers as well as for new embroidery companies just starting up.

For the novice embroiderer who wishes to buy their first embroidery machine, this is generally the smartest way to go. A used embroidery machine can be significantly less than a new embroidery machine. It allows the buyer to try out a specific brand or model of used embroidery machine they are most interested in as well as being able to try out embroidering itself with much less risk. If they buy a used embroidery machine that they dislike or if they do not enjoy embroidering, they have not invested the same kind of money, as they would have if they bought a new embroidery machine.

New embroidery companies can also benefit from purchasing a professional used embroidery machine. Much the same as for novice embroiderers, as used embroidery machine permits buyers more flexibility. Professional embroidery machines are very expensive and can cost anywhere from $7000 to well over $35, 000 for the embroidery machine alone, not including software, accessories, or materials. Used embroidery machines can be found for significantly less which makes start up costs for the business more reasonable and can mean the difference between success and failure for new embroidery businesses. Buying a used embroidery machine also gives they buyer a chance to use a specific brand or model and decide if it is really the one they wish to buy new in the future.

Used embroidery machines can be found from a variety of sources both locally and online. Most embroidery machine stores will offer used embroidery machines as well as new. This is generally the best place for novice embroiderers to start looking. Companies may prefer to start online, as they are more likely to find more selection from the bigger suppliers listed as well as better prices.

Both novices and companies should be sure to find out how many hours of use the used embroidery machine has, what work has been done on it and what kind of warranties are offered. Used embroidery machines are not less expensive if you buy a machine that doesn?t work or will break down shortly after you purchase it. There is always some gamble when buying a used embroidery machine, but you can eliminate most of this by buying through a reputable company and asking the right questions.