Playing with stitches – Brother PC420

Earlier this evening, I sewed with my Brother PC-420. The fabric used was from repurposed jeans.

Recently, my father gave me a pair of his jeans. He no longer wears them. I cut them and earlier today I started sewing…

Having read numerous reviews about my Brother Project Runway PC420PRW, I already knew that it should be able to handle several layers of fabric without any issue… and I was right.

With this “jean bag in progress”, there were several occasions where I was sewing through four layers of fabric at a time! My Brother PC-420 blissfully sewed through all layers without any issues.

My daughter guessed that I was making a bag, and she was thrilled to learn that it was for her.  There’s still a lot to do with before it’s finished. I’m going to add an embroidered design; I’ll be using my Brother Se-400 for the machine embroidery.

You want to know something interesting, my Brother PC420 is very similar to some of the Baby Lock machines. It wasn’t too long ago that I learned that Brother manufactures some of the Baby Lock machines.

I’m already familiar with Brother sewing machines… when I was helping to make quilts at our Lutheran church. The church has sewing machines available for the quilting group. The quilting group was my first time working with Brother sewing machines, and I left being impressed with some of the Brother sewing machines. These machines were used exclusively to create machine sewn quilts and they consistently sewed through multiple layers of fabric without any issue.

I’ve already checked out the basic machine stitches when my nine year old daughter and I sewed a dress for her Springfield doll. I must say, this machine does a wonderful job with basic sewing stitches.

Since I got the basic stitches covered, I decided to check out the Brother PC-420’s decorative/embroidery stitches…

Theses stitches aren’t elaborate, so if you’re looking for a machine that really embroiders you’ll need to purchase an embroidery machine. For sewing machine embroidery I use the Brother Se-400, it sews and embroiders but I only purchased it for its embroidery features. Even though it can only embroider a 4″x4″ area, I’m extremely pleased with my Brother Se-400.

While sewing a few of the decorative stitches on my Brother Pc-420, I almost got the muslin fabric caught under the throat plate! Whoops! The machine wasn’t at fault, it was mine! The design I chose had a lot of stitches in a tiny area. I attempted to do this without stabilizer. If I was using a sturdier material like jeans, I might have been fine… but since I was using muslin the machine wasn’t liking that. Fortunately, I stopped the machine in time before I got a lot of fabric caught under the needle plate.  Although I’m still a new at machine embroidery, I know better.

This past week, I’ve put the Brother PC420 sewing machine through it’s paces and it’s doing an excellent job. It’s a computerized machine, which makes. I normally sew with mechanical machines, but I’m enjoying the computerized features that the Brother Pc-420 offers. Such as the automatic thread cutter and needle threader. Who knew something as simple as that, would be a big sell for me? Having the option of selecting stitches using the screen is a nice touch also.

It’s still too early to write a detailed review of this sewing machine, but eventually I’ll get around to reviewing it here on Celebrate Life.