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53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great intermediate machine, December 9, 2009
This review is from: Brother Sewing Machine 9000 (Office Product)
The XR9000 is very lightweight, I don't know if that makes it less robust or not- it seems pretty sturdy but I would not use it for leather. The sewing mechanism is wonderful- very quiet and soft, like cutting through butter. Foot pedal is responsive and the speed limit slider works great. There's also a button control but for whatever weird reason you can not use the start/stop button while the pedal is plugged in; I don't foresee that button getting a lot of use.
There's a reverse/reinforce button which unfortunately is a temporary switch only- not a toggle. It can be used in conjunction with the foot pedal or you just hold the button down and it will go in reverse at a slow speed.
Several extra presser feet are included, e.g. buttonhole, buttonstitch, zipper, blind hem. The one thing I am missing is a quilting guide. There's a slot for it in the foot but it has to be purchased separately. While the accessories are fine, the accessory storage is not. There's a front panel section that you have to pull out and then inside there's a plastic pouch with all the goodies. You have to keep the stuff in the pouch or they'll fall out of the machine. For $0.20 more Brother could have added a proper compartment with a hinge- instead they took a very cheap and impractical storage approach.
Lighting is provided by a bright but focussed white LED. I am somewhat spoiled by having a high wattage light bulb in the previous machine which lit up the entire working area. The XR9000 LED lights up the presser foot really well but that's about it. The "automatic needle threading" is not automatic, but still extremely useful (I keep missing the eye when trying to do it manually).
Even though I wound 3 bobbins I still can't tell whether the machine has an automatic stopping mechanism or just slows down a lot once the bobbin is full. Either way you can run the winding at full speed for a minute and it's quite noticeable once it's complete. The bobbins are full-size and top-loading. There's a somewhat tricky part about catching a hook when loading the bobbin which is not well explained in the manual. The first time I missed that which resulted in unbalanced stitches; reloading the bobbin more carefully took care of it. Another nice feature is that you don't have to pull up the lower thread before you can start to sew.
The stitch patterns are plentiful and half of them look quite nice. The other half has weird default settings where the default stitch length is too long, you can adjust that in the display but it still strikes me as odd. The monogramming feature works- it's fixed size, fixed font and does not look all that great. The XR9000 does not have any adjustable settings for presser foot height or pressure. However, the included default presser foot has some kind of spring adjustment built in which is supposed to help with thick fabric layers. I have not had a chance to try it out yet. The manual and instructional DVD are great and cover all the essentials.
EDIT- 2 months later: I have been having problems with thin fabric veering off to the side which made it impossible to do blind hems or other straight stitches with tight tolerances. For 2 months I thought this was me using it wrong until I brought it to a local store. As it turns out the machine shipped with some defects- the shank was slightly angled and the feed dog timing was off. Repair was $60 and came with a warning by the mechanic that the Brother machines are not particulaly reliable due to lack of solid metal construction. Machine loses 1 star for this and the fact that Brother does not have many authorized service centers.
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36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great machine with lots of extras, November 6, 2009
This review is from: Brother Sewing Machine 9000 (Office Product)
I've used this machine to make lots of crafts and a full sized log cabin quilt with stippling. The top drop bobbin is easy to thread and the bobbin winder is simple to use. The extra feet and longer arm quilting table are wonderful extras. The font is nothing amazing but works nice for simple monogramming. I like that you can drop the feed dogs and free motion quilt. It is a low shank machine and I was able to get a generic walking foot for it. The backlit lcd screen is very nice and easy to read - not too dim or too small. The best feature though is the automatic start/stop, needle up/down, and reverse stitch buttons. I haven't even used the foot pedal!
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing little machine for the price, November 15, 2009
This review is from: Brother Sewing Machine 9000 (Office Product)
I have been sewing for nearly 50 years and had not bought a new machine for almost 30 years. That one cost me, even then, three times what this one did and it can't do a fraction of the functions of this or as well. What impresses me the most is the even sewing on both sides of the fabric, that it can go over thick spots such as seam junctions without skipping stitches, and the array of buttonholes it can make. It can also take the specialty threads on the market -- thick and thin -- without shredding or skipping. It does have a few drawbacks, however. As another reviewer said, it has a low shank so it is hard to start sewing in a thick area without dropping the feed dogs. It also has a long needle screw which protrudes out far enough into the bed that it is easy to whack your finger when the machine is running if you have to hold something close to the presser foot. The bed is not very long so sewing large or thick items such as draperies or upholstery is difficult to get through the opening. It also does not have a right needle position, but the ability to select a starting position (left or center), or up or down, is very nice and easy to change with different applications. The User Manual is very complete and has a good index. Brother Xr9000 Computerized Sewing Machine, Which Offers 80 Built-in Utility(xr-9000)
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