Buying A Sewing Machine - 10 Tips On Choosing What’s Right For You!

If you would like to be able to make you own clothes and soft furnishings a suitable sewing machine is a must.  Sewing machines come with a variety of  features and costs.  A Best10Tips reader with 20 years professional experience in the dressmaking business gives you 10 pointers to getting the right one for you.

1. Buy a sewing machine suited to the level of you experience and usage. Some sewing machines come with 100 or more different embroidery stitches that are just not needed when making your own clothes.
2. Make you sure test a sewing machine before you buy it.  Different makes run at different stitching speeds and you might not be comfortable with all of them.
3. If you are planning on doing a lot of work with your sewing machine, pay more for a better brand such as Bernina or Singer.  A good make of sewing machine will last forever if you look after it.
4. If you are not very keen on sewing and just need a machine to do odd sewing jobs at home, a cheaper brand will be perfect for you.  There is no point in having a really good sewing machine sitting in your cupboard for 51 weeks of the year.
5. If you are really serious about doing a lot of sewing, buy a domestic overlocker AS WELL as a general purpose sewing machine.  They are quicker at binding the edges of fabric and trim it at the same time while using cheaper overlocking threads saves all your good thread for the important jobs.
6. Make sure you have a good sturdy table to use your sewing machine on.  All machines rattle and vibrate, if your table is wobbly too, then your final results will be poor quality.
7. If you are on a tight budget then do look at secondhand sewing machines but try to buy them through a dealer or sewing machine shop. Buying a sewing machine privately, from the small ads can be risky if you don’t know much about them.
8. If you are replacing a sewing machine,  stick to the brand you are used to (unless you thought it was rubbish).  They all have different thread sytems, tensions and menus e.g Bernina and Husqvarna are very different and if you like one, you might not like the other.
9. If you are planning on sewing small, fiddly items make sure you get a machine that has a removable rest (the small table that sits below the needle).   It is easier if you are able to wrap your fabric around the bottom arm of your machine.  Sewing machines that are set into their own table or sewing cupboard don’t allow you to do this.
10. Before you buy a sewing machine, find out how easy it will be to get spare parts and accessories, some manufacturers are more difficult than others.

Recommended Reading:

• Sewing Machine Guide: Tips On Choosing, Buying, And Refurbishing An in depth book that has everything you might need to know when choosing a sewing maching, including buying a used model. Also available in the US on Amazon.com

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Hobbies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.