Sewing Machine Reviews

Wide assortments of sewing machines with features that range from basic to the state-of-the-art are available that can perform complicated tasks at the push of a button. As there are a number of machines, finding the best sewing machine can be a tiresome task. To purchase a quality sewing machine from the market, referring to reviews will help.

Sewing machine reviews are one of the best ways to share your thoughts with other consumers. They are simple guidelines organized in a format that can be used by anyone interested in sewing machines. These reviews provide friendly advice which help readers to find, compare the quality and price, buy, and use top brand sewing machines.

Sewing machine reviews are regarded as forums where people talk about their experience in working with sewing machines. Through sewing machine reviews, people discuss about the problems they have encountered while using the product, sewing tips, and patterns. These tips help consumers in choosing the best sewing machine.

Today, there are many websites that publish reviews on sewing machines. But, certain websites do not provide information based on tests. So, for a reliable sewing machine review, one must refer to reviews that test machines in a systematic way and provide in-depth information.

Sewing machine reviews available on the websites are categorized on the basis of price, brand, and type. These reviews are furnished by users as well as by the manufacturers. But, the best sewing machine reviews are often obtained from the person who owns a sewing machine.

Consumerreports.org, Which.net, and Choice.com are some of the online source for the best sewing machine reviews. They test sewing machines with a wide range of fabrics from silk to denim so as to provide a reliable sewing machine review.

Sewing Machines provides detailed information on Sewing Machines, Industrial Sewing Machines, Embroidery Sewing Machines, Antique Sewing Machines and more. Sewing Machines is affiliated with Portable Steam Cleaners.

Computerized Sewing Machines

Sewing machines did not go into mass production until the 1850's, when Isaac Singer built the first commercially successful machine. Singer built the first sewing machine where the needle moved up and down rather than the side-to-side and the needle was powered by a foot treadle.

Some of todays home sewing machines have built-in computers, as well as small computer monitor displays for operation. In these models, the computer directly controls several different motors in the machine, which precisely move the needle bar, the tensioning discs, the feed dog and other elements in the sewing machine.

Computerized sewing machines may also hook up to your computer which allows you to download patterns directly from the Internet allowing you to be extremly inventive.

Computerized machines have the ability to create complex embroidery patterns. This sort of high-tech sewing machine is a lot more complex than the fully manual sewing machines of 200 years ago, or even the one your grandmother used, but they are both built around the same simple stitching system: A needle passes a loop of thread through a piece of fabric, where it is wound around another length of thread.

Find out more about these fantastic sewing machines, machines like Janome/Memory Craft and New Home Sewing, Embroidery, Quilting and of course Serger Machines that offer

• Auto-Tension
• Flat Bed
• Quilting Machines & Frames
• Computer Sewing & Embroidery Combos
• Lightweight Compact Portables
• Top Drop-in bobbin
• Auto Size 1-Step Buttonholes
• Overlock Serger

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The Ins and Outs of Embroidery for Team Sports

One of the most common applications of embroidery is the customization of sports apparel such as adding logos or names to warm-up uniforms, gym bags, or similar items. When a team customizes their warm-ups or uniforms using embroidery, it creates a sense of unity and gives the team a sharper, more professional look. A significant percentage of customers who shop RobbinsSports.com for sports apparel want to have more than just a blank warm-up jacket or a plain duffle bag. To complete their d?cor, they know that signing their sportswear with their team?s logo is imperative. However, especially for those who have been given the charge of outfitting the team for the first time, the details of what?s involved in adding embroidery to their order are not clear. Here is some helpful information for understanding the process and the pricing for adding customized embroidery to your next sports apparel purchase.

Artwork

If you just want to add personalized names to the left chest of a jacket or to the side of a gym bag, you won?t have to worry much about artwork. However, if you need to have a logo (usually these are done as left chest or full back arrangements on jackets or placed on the side or end of a duffel bag) added to your sports apparel, you should come prepared with a digital copy of the logo you want to use. Most embroiderers charge an artwork fee for any significant changes they have to make to your logo to get it ready for digitizing (see below). If you want your embroiderer to start from scratch to create your logo, be prepared to pay about $100.00 or more, depending upon the complexity of the logo you want.

Digitizing

Digitizing involves transforming a digital image into a file that can be read and interpreted by an embroidery machine. Typical charges for this are about $10 per thousand stitches. So how do you know how many stitches your logo has in it until you get it digitized? Most digitizers can give you a pretty good estimate before they begin digitizing your logo. Getting an estimate on the cost of digitizing your logo will help you keep your expenses within the range you expect when you actually place the order.

After you have had a logo digitized, be sure to keep a copy of it on file for the organization you?re representing. Doing so will enable the team to avoid the digitizing expense when placing future orders. Digitizing can become expensive quickly, especially if you are only placing an order for a small number of uniforms, so it?s obviously best to try to avoid that overhead.

Pricing

Pricing with embroidery is most often done based upon the stitch count of your logo, which determines the time it takes for any particular embroidery machine to complete the logo. Usually embroiderers give price breaks according to the quantity you are ordering. Of course the pricing varies from one company to another. Here are some benchmarks. If you want to have a left chest logo put onto a typical windbreaker jacket and you are ordering twelve of them, you?ll likely pay about $5.00-$6.00 per embroidered logo for logos that are under 7,000 stitches. If you are ordering less than that quantity, you may find that your embroiderer charges a setup fee as well. Pricing beyond 7,000 stitches usually goes up on a per thousand basis. You can normally expect to pay an additional $0.50-0.60 per thousand stitches beyond 7,000.

For an order of hundreds of jackets compared to just ten or twelve, you should get a price break from your embroiderer. Most companies will go down to a threshold price (say for instance $3.00 per logo for a 7,000 stitch logo) based upon a certain quantity ? say 200 articles. Beyond that number of embroidered logos, the pricing will stay the same no matter how many more you have done.

Lead Times

We find that many of our customers contact us in a rushed hurry, often times asking for miracles. Many times we are able to meet their demands. However, to be a preferred customer, it is best to allow one and a half to two weeks for your order to be embroidered and delivered. Most embroiderers don?t keep an inventory of all the products listed in their catalogs, so you need to plan a few extra days to have those shipped from the manufacturer to your embroiderer. Planning ahead can save you and your embroiderer a lot of headache and stress.

Richard Robbins is one of the owners of Robbins Sports, a retailer of sports apparel and accesories such as gym bags, sports uniforms, and warm-up outfits.

Embroidery Digitizing Forums Are Of Great Help

So you've put a lot of work into getting ready to embroider your own items. You've done your research. You choose your pattern carefully, possibly digitizing your own or having someone else do it for you. You choose what you want to have your pattern embroidered on, whether it be a bag, a shirt or something else entirely. You try to start with your embroidering, and you get stuck. You're not entirely sure where to start embroidering your pattern.

What do you do?

If the user manual for your machine doesn't cover this, you can always guess. Making mistakes isn't a big deal. It may be tedious but you can pick the thread out so you can start over with embroidering the pattern on your item. It's time consuming, but it's one way to learn what you need to know.

On the other hand, you can go online to an embroidery forum. Pull up a search engine and type in 'embroidery forum.' You can go to one of these bulletin board type websites to ask the questions that come up in your projects.

On an embroidery forum, you can get a lot of information and help for your embroidery projects. There will be information on what program to use if you decide to digitize your own embroidery pattern. There might even be information on companies to digitize your pattern for you.

Getting information from an embroidery forum may take awhile. The information is organized, but it's not going to have a table of contents. You can spend hours or even days getting to know your topic. You can even use the forums to make friends who have the same interests as you do. All that's required is regular posting to the forum itself.

If after reading, you still can't find the answer to your question, create an account and ask the question on the forum. As a general rule you want to make sure you are polite and ask your question nicely. If someone has experience with what you are asking, they will answer you.

As a general rule, an embroidery forum is one of the best places to get information on digital embroidery and embroidery machines. There is information on all the different type of embroidery machines, and information on different types of digitizing software.

You may even decide you want to look over the forums before you even buy your embroidery machine. Doing that, you can get information on the best machine to buy. Before you buy digitizing software, you will definitely want to look at the forums. In doing so, you may decide that digitizing your own pattern is not for you.

Embroidery forums are definitely one of the best ways for you to get to know your new hobby or business. I personally recomend www.digitizingtalk.com

Sahel is the Sales/Support representative of Cheap Digitizing. You can find more information or ask him questions about Embroidery Digitizing on www.cheapdigitizing.com

How Does Industrial Embroidery Work?

Embroidery is one of the highest-quality possibilities of textile refinements. Durability, feeling and washability of the applied company logo, motif or the promotion message are hardly to be excelled by other printing methods.

However, how does such an embroidery design get onto caps, pullovers or pockets?
At the beginning stands the idea of a design, mostly in the form of a company logo together with a slogan. If the idea only exists on paper, the design must be digitized into computer readable data. This takes place e.g. through reading in with a scanner. Then if the motif is available as a file, it must be converted into vector graphics. In this case, individual pixels are no more determining for the design but the lines, which separate a color field. One recognizes vector graphics also by the fact that one is able to enlarge them infinitely without quality loss, because the dividing lines always remain sharp. These vector graphics are loaded into the punch program. The semantics of the word is to be traced back to the procedures before the computerized embroidery program creation where the commands were still pricked by hand in a punch card made of hard paper.

The puncher on the software decisively determines the quality of the finished stitch content. Here there are dozens of parameters such as stitch density, stitch direction, stitch distance, stitch pattern and the precedence of stitch work correctly on the motif, the embroidery machine and the textiles to be embroidered. Thus a cap requires a different embroidery program than a leather jacket, even if it concerns one and the same embroidery motif.
Not without reason there are companies which have specialized one and only in the production of the embroidery motifs.
Then if the embroidery program is ready, it is transmitted either by network, direct connection or floppy disk to the embroidery machine. Again also in the embroidery machine there are different parameters which can improve the embroidery result or make it worse. The most important ones here are above and under thread tension and embroidery speed.
Then the real conversion of the program into the textile embroidery is only routine. The embroidery machine is made, in principle, just like a normal house sewing machine, many components, e.g. the under thread guidance looks very similar.

The essential difference is the amount of needles, which reaches from 6 up to 18 automatically changing needles and therefore usable colors in one motif. Then when the motif is constructed, a quick change of the embroidery piece can be done, which makes the embroidery very interesting especially for bigger works orders. Bigger embroidery machines are so-called multi head machines, here i.e. up to 24 embroideries are done at the same time. This increases the economic efficiency and therefore makes the price per piece more attractive. With the use of the finished product there are hardly any restrictions. Therefore, work clothes are embroidered with pleasure. Also clothes that needs chlorine laundry, like for example doctor's smocks can be permanently improved with special sewing cotton.

Jan Detlefsen is owner and operator of Tonsai Headwear, a full service company for headwear need of all kinds and a specialised Embroidery Company for Caps and Hats. He also runs a Blog about headwear.

PE-Design Embroidery Digitizing Software: Getting Started

What is PE-Design?

PE-Design is an embroidery digitizing software system available from Brother dealers and though the 'PE' stands for Personal Embroidery, don't let that fool you. It's a robust system that allows for some pretty advanced digitizing and embroidery and is an excellent program to begin learning the art of embroidery digitizing. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) or What-You-See/Interact-With-On-The-Screen is colorful with large, intuitive buttons and fly-outs. It's also organized very well with no clutter for a large workspace.

PE-Design allows the digitizer to convert a digital picture to stitches and save it in a format that can be read by the computer in your embroidery machine. The image can be one you've hand drawn and scanned, one created in another imaging program such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, or JASC Paint Shop Pro, one you've captured (legally, of course) from the Internet, a CD or floppy, or a digital snapshot from your digital camera. Whatever the case, the original image must be in .jpg, .gif or .bmp format.

The PE-Design full product package includes a card reader/writer. It must be plugged into a USB port in order for the program to run. Though you can install the program on any machine, it can only function on the machine where the reader/writer is installed.

Once you've created your design, you can save it in Brother (*.PES), Husqvarna/Viking (*.HUS), Melo (*.EXP), Tajima (*.DST) and Pfaff (*.PCS) formats. It is a Brother product, so its native format is PES.

What Does It Cost?

The program will probably run you somewhere between $1,000.00 and $1,200.00, but if you are purchasing an embroidery machine or are a good customer of the shop and don't mind a little dickering, you might be able to negotiate a substantial savings. It never hurts to try. Here's a tip: Before you buy ask your dealer if any major upgrades to the software have been announced. If a major upgrade is forthcoming and you are in no hurry, you may want to postpone your purchase. Major upgrades come with a price, usually in the range of $250.00 to $300.00, and must be purchased from a Brother dealer. Though a major upgrade is usually worth the investment, you don't want to purchase the software one month just to have to shell out more money a few months later. Minor upgrades, from the current version 6.0 to version 6.07 for instance, are free, and are downloaded from the Brother web site.

Commercial or Home-based?

PE-Design is designed with the home-based digitizer and personal embroiderer in mind. That means that many functions or settings are automatic with limited manual control available to the digitizer. Commercial digitizing software is just the opposite: Functions and settings are in the hands of the digitizer and automatic settings can be adjusted and saved. Of course, commercial digitizing software will cost five to twenty times more than PE-Design. Still, in the hands of a skilled and creative digitizer, PE-Design produces excellent embroidery designs.

Beginning to Digitize

As with any sophisticated software be prepared to practice, practice, practice and use your creativity to explore and push the program to its limits. Learn the fundamentals of what makes a design sew out perfectly, then look at the designs you like with an analytical eye. Ask, "How did they do that?" and try to recreate the technique. With time you'll develop your own style and find your digitizing niche.

Many shops offer digitizing classes. Ask to sit in for free on a few before making a time or financial commitment. If all the instructor does is follow the booklet that came with the software, save your money. You'll probably teach yourself quicker.

Speaking of the manual: It is 262 pages and was obviously written by a team very familiar with PE-Design and the English language. It is well organized with plenty of images and screenshots, is very easy to read and covers the basic use of every tool in depth. It is not a digitizing teacher. Use it to learn the tools, it won't take long, then practice, practice, practice.

The Bottom Line

If you are interested and excited about learning to digitize your own embroidery designs, whether for personal use or to sell, PE-Design is a wonderful way to get started. Its reasonable entry fee and easy to use and learn interface, will allow you to reach new creative heights in all your embroideries.

Deb Schneider is an embroidery design digitizer and PE-Design instructor offering her machine embroidery designs, Redwork designs and appliques on her website: WindstarEmbroidery.com