Brother HC1850 Sewing and Quilting Machine, 185 Built-in Stitches, LCD Display, 8 Included Feet

Well I just got this today and got it two day delivery with my Prime.. I can't tell you how pleased I am with it .. I am in the middle of making a dress and my not to old Singer 7422 has been acting up and I took it to the shop where they supposedly fixed it and it worked for maybe fifteen minutes.. until it started bird nesting again breaking needles and bunching fabric putting holes in it and I'm an experienced sewer and I made sure 100 times or more I had threaded it correctly .. the bobbin was right and the case was clean but nothing I did including messing with the tension could get it going again.. I threw up my hands and for almost a full day did my homework on Amazon looking for a good machine that did not say it was persnickety about thread.. had timing problems and just really had no problems at all and found this machine that only had a couple bad reviews and I'm going to chalk that up to someone not knowing what they are doing .. or just got a lemon.. one out of the three complained it did not come with all its parts, well mine came with all its' promised parts .. I promptly sat down with it after watching the CD that's about 20 mins and it really is very intuitive once you look at it .. but I wanted to make sure I was treading it right and doing the bobbin right at first since it is a Brother and I had a Singer .. well it's almost identical in it's threading .. but the Quick bobbin drop made it very easy and you know you have it in right the first time you pop it in .. Well I sat down and started putting it through it's paces with scrap fabric .. it sews like a dream.. could not be happier with it .. comes with all the feet you could needed except the edge hemming foot .. which is inexpensive and already ordered one.. Love the way it tells you what foot to use with the stitch.. the manual is complete and through and found though I did not have to read much of it as I said it's pretty much intuitive if your an experienced sewer.. I tired the monogram feature and was impressed.. still looking to find out how to space in between words but I'm sure it's there.. would have been nice to have fonts but for the price this is an excellent deal .. something you would expect to pay a lot more money for .. not sure how it handles thick stacks of material but read in one review it could sew though four layers of denim and I'm sure that's all I will ever need .. it's not as light as some of the reviews say it is and it does not walk around when sewing and I found it plenty heavy as heavy as my Singer .. If I port it around I do not want to be carrying something too heavy.. I used to sew for a living and used to carry my old Brother around with me all the time and this is about the same weight and that was 40 years ago.. I bought the Brother because I had a Brother in the past and was pleased with it and it never gave me one problem.. never had it in the Shop and so far I've had this Singer in the shop twice in less than six months.. Love the 130 stitches and various button holes it does and the fancy stitches, though, do not know what I'm going to do with them as my Grand kids are beyond putting fancy edging on cute dresses I sew .. maybe when they give me great grand kids it will be useful.. but it was fun to play with them ..Maybe on some crafts they will come in handy but I usually just sew garments.. I love the button for running the machine without the pedal but since I'm so used to pedal sewing I don't know now much use it will get .. it has all the bells and whistles I could ask for for a great price .. it does come with a foot for quilting and a board for quilting but I'm not a quilter so that's moot but looks like it's made for a quilter .. I do not know how much more I could ask for in a machine.. it has everything it seems they did not leave anything out in this machine when they designed it .. Also love the button that will raise and lower the needle and the needle threader and to be honest I've had needle threaders found them intimidating and hard to use but this one I got to work for me right off the bat.. a cinch.. my old eyes are not what they used to be.. so every convenience is a plus for me .. the large LED readout to set the stitches and the panel that shows you the stitches and what number to program even I can see that without glasses.. I can't go on enough about this machine and feel I'm writing this a bit far in advance but since my experience with Brother machines has always been good I'm giving this five stars.. My son was funny he said well you got a Brother what do you think of it and I said they are great machines I've used them before he goes really I only know of Brother because of their electronics.. lol Well I replied honey Brother has been making machines for over 100 years now .. he was amazed.. You can't go wrong with this machine .. I saw other Brothers that did not have as many features for less than what I paid for this but I wanted it all.. it was still a bargain..Oh and the light on the machine is bright .. really lights up what your sewing.. I saw some complaints that it was not bright enough .. they must be sewing in a dungeon.. again if you have the money to spend on the machine do it you will not be disappointed.. I'm not .. Also there is plenty of room between the machine and the base ,some complained it was not big enough this is as average as you'll find .. nothing has put me off about this machine so far.. It's a dream machine..

Excellent in every way possible

As a 60 year old man who has never sewn a thing this machine is awesome.Super simple to set up, navigating the options are just as easy, loading bobbins and threading needles is a breeze.I did a lot of research before I committed to this particular machine with ease of use being a priority, than customer support and of course price. This machine checked all the boxes, I am by far no expert now but after spending 5 hours playing with the functions I have confidence.

Love this machine! I read the reviews and I’m glad I did. It runs so quiet and smoothly. My other machine was always having tension problems. I didn’t realize how much time I was fighting it until I got one that doesn’t have those problems. Definitely a joy to use.

I have only had my machine for about a month, but so far everything has been great. It came on time and was packaged nicely. Everything included in the description was in the box so no issue there. I have used it to sew a Christmas stocking and it managed to sew through several layers of cotton fabric and interfacing. The multiple speed options with the stop/start button and a foot peddle is great. I did not have to change the thread tension at all when I started sewing, although If I did need to it would be fairly easy. Changing the different feet was no issue, automatic threading worked well. I wish the power cord was a little longer especially since you should not use an extension cord with this machine. I only have 2 issues with this machine as a whole. Number 1 is the feed dogs. One of the first things I did was drop the feed dogs to make sure it worked. They dropped but when I pushed the lever back to raise them they didn't raise. I immediately panicked. This issue is not mentioned anywhere in the manual but if you search online it is a known problem. To fix it all I had to do was turn the lever to the raised position and sew a few stitches. They popped right back up but this so far has happened every time I lower them. Number 2 is the drawing up the thread section of the manual. You do not need to actually do that on this machine, it does it for you once you start sewing, but this is not explicitly stated in the manual. It does say that if your machine has that feature then you can just start sewing, but it can be a bit confusing to include that section in a manual for a machine that should have it. I think this was partly my fault but I spent a lot of time trying to draw up the lower thread when I didn't even need to. So far all the decorative stitches work well, once you have master continuous speed they come out even. The monogramming is really neat and you can program all the letters you want in a row, the font is small but I didn't buy this machine for that feature in particular. This is a good machine for a beginner sewer and is easy to use. The manual does tell you which stitches are for what, which fabric goes with which stitch, and detailed instructions that will answer most if not all questions.