Customer Reviews

Brother SE350 Computerized Embroidery-and-Sewing Machine

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought my Brother in April 2008 and have been sewing on it daily for at least 3 hours every day since then. I've never had ANY trouble with it. It's a MUST that you also buy the PED Basic to go with your machine so that you can download designs from the internet. I've downloaded over 8,000 free designs so far, and that's just a "drop in the bucket". You're limited to 4 x 4 designs (that's the only drawback). The machine is very light weight and has accompanied me on many trips. You don't have to have special needles or special bobbins for this machine. It's VERY user friendly! The patterns that come with the machine are very high quality, as are the Alphabets. I'd like to have more fonts on the machine, but they are so easily accessible on the internet that this really isn't an issue. I will say that 40 weight rayon thread seems to work best (and use a bobbin thread when embroidering). When I finally wear this machine out, I'll probably go with another Brother machine.

I've been sewing for years, and have made anything from ball gowns to simple Halloween costumes. I have a Brother Serger, and a New Home Sewing Machine, plus a Singer Commercial machine that I put a lot of cloth through in a year. I have wanted to venture into machine embroidery for some time now and saw this little machine at my local Wally World, it looked like fun so I bought it and here is what I have found so far;
Cons: Very small throat-makes it very difficult to change feet, and thread by hand. Just is not enough room under there. Some of my projects that have yards and yards of material I know I will have difficulty doing on this machine.
Embroidery hoop broke after just a few uses. Brother will replace if I ship it to them at my cost. They will then send a bag of bobbins back to me with my replacement hoop to easing the shipping pain.
Wish the bobbin cover did not remove completely as it is tiny and easy to misplace or gets hidden under your project.
Why bother including the little white pouch for accessories? It was ripped/split out of the box. Just give me a zip lock baggy to start with if you can not include a decent box for the seam ripper, hole punch, brush...its what all this stuff gets stored in after the machine is unpacked anyway.
Probably a bit picky but I felt the machine was a bit loud in comparison to my other machines.
Pros: Easy to use. The embroidery section walks you through and prompts for thread color change. Very neat to watch a pattern get colored in.
Nice selection of loaded designs as an intro.
Love the touch screen feature.
The cut thread feature is also handy and will be a huge plus when doing a large project.
The needle up or down, the lighted go stop button, needle threader and so on are super features that are very easy to get fond of.
So in conclusion I like this machine, its cute, fun and easy to use. The size limitations and embroidery hoop breaking keep me from giving this a five star rating.

The Brother Sewing machine SE-350 is great for that..... SEWING. Even if all you want to do is small monogramming and little bit of embroidery, you will quickly grow out of it. Here is why. I bought this because of the price and ALL the great things it had to offer. The sewing part is great, lots of stitches, easy to thread, but if you will not be using the embroidery part, you can get as many different types of stitches without the embroidery attachment for less than half the price of the brother SE-350. The Brother SE-350 cost me $379.99 plus tax at Walmart.

Now, if you do want to do a big of embroidery of monogramming, the folks at brother tell you the machine comes with a big 4x4 inch embroidery hoop, which for me was plenty. BUT you can ONLY MONOGRAM LETTERS that are about 1 inch big with the included 4x4 hoop. Should you want bigger letters, you need to buy the large hoop and even then, the letters only get as big as 1 5/8 inch. Should you desire to adjust the sizes, well, you need a digitizer, which the cheapest I have found is the Dakota, and it costs about $100. On top of that you will need the card reader, because Brother needs to make extra money and they could not use any of the dozens of cards that already exist on the market. The card reader is just over $100. THEN, you need to buy the card so you can transfer and adjust your designs....that is another $30 dlls.

In summary, I will be taking this back to the store today and I am afraid I would never buy brother again. If the box of the brother SE-350 had told me that I could only monogram letters less or about 1 inch big, that machine wouldn't have been taken out of the box. I agree with others too, the bobbin cover is very easily misplaced.

I give this machine 5 stars for ease of use, and 3 stars for the area where brother "fell down" on the job.

This machine comes with everything you need to begin sewing except the cloth ... including a spool of thread, bobbins, even a pair of sewing scissors! The CD that came with it was very helpful, and since my other machine was much older (and only sewed basic stitches), I was glad I watched it.

I started with a "test" piece of fabric, and was impressed at how easy it was to switch between stitches and to do some "fancywork" right out of the box. I have since moved on to making a quilt, and I have come to love the button instead of the old fashioned foot pedal (that also comes included). The needle up/down and the cut buttons are a great added touch.

While Brother Advertises this machine as having 70 patterns, 26 of them are letters of the Alphabet. However, the patterns are generic enough to be useful for a beginner.

The downside:
The additional embroidery patterns come on a "unique" card - and they are quite pricey. They do have a card writer Brother PED-Basic Software for Downloading Embroidery Designs with software that you can use to download your own. It is the only way to transfer new files (available on the internet) to the sewing machine. Given today's technology, brother could have used any of the flash cards or usb port to do the same thing. (Brother does have USB ports in their more expensive sewing machines) So, when figuring the cost of this machine, you need to include this item if you want to expand your embroidery content.

I suggest that if you are into embroidery, the Brother PE700II Embroidery Machine with USB Port may be a better buy long-term ... even though it is more costly. It offers both a USB port and a 5x7 embroidery area.

However, as a "normal sewer" who wants to move back and forth between both, this is a wonderful machine for the price.

EDIT - One other review stated that he/she was disappointed in the ability to do fonts. While there are basic fonts included on the brother, there are a number of pes files with much larger fonts that work well with the machine that are available both free (online) and at a cost - up to 4" per letter. I have used them to decorate clothing for my granddaughter.

UPDATE - I just thought I'd update this. I have now been using the sewing machine for more than 2 years and love it better every time I use it. I have made a large number of quilts using this machine, and wouldn't trade it for anything.

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Well This was a gift for my wife. I did not know what sewing machine to get so I just read a lot of reviews and went with this one. When she opened it up she loved it. but still the real moment is when she will try to use it, and see if I did any good in my pick. Well she has made 3 baby dresses so far( I think they call them pillow case dresses) and 3 pair of shoes to match. I asked her several times does she like the machine, and she simple says she loves it!!! It is not loud either. I can watch TV while she is about 10 feet away (in the same room) with no interference with my hearing the TV. Believe it or not I even used it. To get ready for the big game (Alabama fan here, Roll Tide) I made 10 rally rags. Hounds tooth fabric on one side and a red alabama print on the other side. The hounds tooth side I embroidered "Roll Tide Roll". Sewed them right sides in, then reversed them insides to out. Put a decorative stitch on the edges. They turned out great. (sorry for improper sewing terms here). Of course my sewing was not the best (lol) but they are cool looking. It was a hit at the championship party we went to (tried to insert a video, if it worked). So it is easy enough that I could use, but had everything My wife needs to do her stuff. I love the easy threading and automatic needle threader. I also bought her the card reader, but she has not used it as of yet. Now she says she wants a serger, so I am here at Amazon looking at the Brother Serger. All in all, I would highly recommend this.
Mike

I had a set amount of money that I could use for a sewing machine and after much research I finally settled on this one. It comes with so many features that I thought it was the perfect choice for me. It comes with 7 feet so that you don't have to waste extra money buying attachments like you do with other machines.

There are only two things that would make this machine even better: a scanner so that you can embroider your own designs or a USB port so that you can upload your own designs. I know that would drive up the price to an insane amount though.

The best part of the machine is how easy it is to thread both the machine and the bobbin. There is no need for an extra bobbin threader unless you own a boutique. You don't even have to use the foot pedal if you don't want to. Thats also optional for better control.

I am just learning to sew (a complete novice), and wanted to buy a machine that would be easy to use and introduce me to embroidery. This machine is WONDERFUL! It is very easy to learn to use, and the instruction manual that came with it is very, very easy to follow. In addition, the manual includes a lot of helpful hints for sewing, which allowed me to sew a sleeper for my 18 month old son in two days without any other book or person to guide me (and this was done while he was running around me). The help guide on the LED screen is wonderful too. I still glance at it when putting thread on a bobbin. I also like that you can start/stop the machine using a button or the pedal. I am not yet good at controlling my speed using the pedal, and that button proved to be invaluable to me.

I followed the manual to setup the machine for embroidery, and within no time I was embroidering on scraps of fabric. The embroidery came out so beautiful. I left my embroidery work out for my husband to see. When he saw them he assumed my mother, who is quite experienced, had done them and sent them to me to see! My mother's birthday was a few days later, so I went out and bought a sleep shirt, embroidered a gorgeous butterfly on it and her name, and overnighted it to her as a gift...just after a couple of hours of playing with the embroidery function. My mom loved it and was soooo impressed. She even commented that her machine can't do that!

Overall, a fabulous buy. I've also realized that this machine will grow with me as I tackle more advanced projects. One more thing worth noting; the machine comes with several accessories, such as a cloth cover, various presser feet and needles, small scissors, bobbins, embroidery bobbin thread, and many other things I haven't figured out what they are yet! Buy it...you won't regret it!

I own this machine, and it has a lot of cool features for such a bargain price. I've previously owned 2 Berninas, and since I travel full-time in an RV, I wanted a machine that was not heavy and expensive. If you follow the directions, this machine works beautifully. I really love this little machine, and it goes everywhere I go, including classes. This says a lot since I'm a former Bernina owner. I recommend it wholeheartedly!!!!!

I've had two hand-me-down sewing machines that were very basic. When the last one died I decided to treat myself. I probably won't do much with the embroidery other than some odds and ends here and there. I typically just do mending and hemming.

Out of the box, I was pleased. Evidently the bobbins are "different" than other bobbins as far as size but I already had a package of the exact same size.

The only trouble I've had was using 22 cent WM thread - the tension SOMETIMES wasn't right. But then, using Coates and Clark at $4 a spool also sometimes the tension was temperamental.

The instructions are comprehensive, the tutorials broadbrush. In the month I've had this I've sewn two dresses and one quilt, and hemmed a couple pairs of pants. Here are my comments on each:

The dresses were a satin (here I had some trouble with tension on the thin, slippery lining no matter the thread or tension setting) and a georgette (here I just totally botched the dress on my own but it was tricky to sew this very thin, gauzy fabric).

The quilt was a handmade one I'd just finished but I wanted to embroider a poem around the outer border. Some of the letters are a little weird - hard to line it up right but I think it turned out well for the most part. At some points, the machine would stop at the end of each letter, but most of the time it completed the whole word I'd programmed in. The size of the text was very accommodating - you can choose S, M, or L for the text size. My letters were anywhere from 1/2 inch to 2 inches tall.

The hemming of the pants was flawless.

Once you get the "bobbin thread low" message, I can't figure out how to replace the bobbin (much less fill a new bobbin without losing your place in the embroidery), making a seamless transition from the end of the old thread and the beginning of the new one.

I very much like that I don't need to worry about the thread pulling out of the needle as the needle descends if the "tail" isn't long enough, like my older sewing machines. I've never had that happen.

My old kenmore sewing machine broke (after owning it for 10 years) so I decided to replace it with a sewing machine with the emboridery feature. The sewing machine part is very quiet-- which is great for when I am using it late nights. The emboridery part was a little harder to figure out because I never own an emboridery machine before. I watched the videos that came with it, but I still had a little bit of a hard time. The help menu on the machine itself was helpful. The machine is smaller in size than other embroidery machines. Some people might think that because the machine is light weight it would not be very stable. While this is somewhat true, I do like that it is light weight. Because I live in a condo with very little free space, it is nice to have a machine that is light enough for me to carry around and store away after each use. This is a great machine for a beginner. Keep in mind that the machine uses a 4x4 hoop, so your embroidery size will be limited. I did not mind that very much because the other machines I looked at with larger hoop sizes cost several hundred dollars more. If it is within your budget, I would say buy a large machine with more hoop size options. If you are limited on how much you can spend (like me) then this is a good investment.