The best intermediate sewing machine

By Jackie Reeve

This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best homewares. When readers choose to buy The Sweethome’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After talking with two sewing machine dealers, a teacher, and seasoned sewers, we think computerized machines are the best bet for intermediate sewers and for beginners who know they love sewing and can invest a little more for features that will make learning easier. We spent 12 hours researching specs, reviews, and recommendations, and testing several machines. We think the Janome DC5100 offers the best combination of useful and versatile computerized features for a range of sewers. Plus, it comes at a great price. We have other picks for quilters, travelers, and anyone who wants dealer perks in our full guide.

This review covers only computerized machines. If you’re interested in mechanical machines less than $300, check out our review of the best sewing machine for beginners. If you have the basics of sewing down—like how to thread a machine, change a bobbin and a needle, and make simple pillows or clothes—you might want to invest in an intermediate-level machine that can help you progress into more complicated projects. Although you can spend thousands on computerized models, a budget of $400 to $900 will get you really handy features, like the machine telling you which stitch and presser foot to use for specific fabrics.

How we picked and tested

We considered machines best for all-purpose use, quilting, travelling and small spaces, and for those that want to take sewing classes and buy from a dealer (dealers will often throw in classes for the cost of a machine).

After looking at our Best Sewing Machine for Beginners guide, we narrowed down machines within a $400 to $600 price range with the features we would want if we weren’t beginners anymore. We were looking for a good selection of useful everyday stitches, like straight, zigzag, buttonhole, and basting (which loosely secures layers together while you work, an alternative to pins).

Harvey Federman, owner of the sewing machine dealership Sew Right, suggested we look for machines with automatic needle threading (which is great if your eyes strain to thread through those impossibly tiny needle holes), easy-to-edit stitch width and length options (and a program mode to save them, if possible), a start/stop button so you don’t have to use the foot pedal, and a needle up/down feature to let you choose where the needle stops when you stop sewing. Every machine on this list has at least three out of these four functions.

We wanted a nice assortment of included presser feet, including ¼-inch seam, zigzag, buttonhole, zipper, darning, and straight stitch. We were also looking for a few included bobbins and some basic cleaning supplies to help maximize the initial investment in the machine. And ideally we wanted safety features, like a machine that beeps or won’t sew if the presser foot is raised—this helps prevent you from sewing over your fingers.

To find machines with as many of these options as possible and then start narrowing them down, we paid close attention to models that were readily available on sites like Amazon and Sewing Machines Plus, a huge online sewing store, and we looked at their user reviews. Then we read thorough reviews from sewing sites and blogs. We reached out to Federman, who sells a range of brands at his dealership, to see what we should be looking for in this price category.

Best for sewing a range of products

We think the Janome DC5100 is a great all-around machine for most intermediate sewing needs. Compared with other computerized machines less than $600, the DC5100 offers more preprogrammed features, better customer service, and you can buy it online or at a dealership, depending on what’s more convenient for you. This machine will do a great job at sewing heavy-duty fabrics like denim or leather, delicate silks, and even medium and large projects like curtains or twin-size quilts. It has most of the features on our wishlist for an intermediate machine.

The DC5100 includes 167 stitches, which covers all the essentials we like to see—straight, zigzag, basting, stretch—plus many decorative stitches for embellishments. Most reviews we came across in our research noted the high quality of the stitching this machine produces. Reviews for machines frequently mention good stitch quality, but across the board reviewers raved about it for the DC5100. It scored a perfect 5.0 on Sewing Insight, a well-known sewing review blog.

The Janome DC5100 comes with 167 stitches, many of which are decorative. Most people probably won’t use all the stitches, but they’re nice for customizing projects.

This pick has a few drawbacks. It does not have the safety feature that stops the machine from sewing if the presser foot is raised. And Janome’s warranty isn’t as good as that of some other companies on our list. But even with the drawbacks, we have experience with Janome machines and know they’re reliable and built to last.

Good for travel and small sewing spaces

If you need a machine for traveling, or to fit in a small space, Janome makes excellent three-quarter-size sewing machines that are smaller and lighter than standard machines. We looked at several other three-quarter machines, but this Janome gives more features at a better price. The New Home 720 is a standout choice if you want a machine to take with you to sewing classes, on vacation, or even if you want to do light sewing but don’t have the space for a heavy machine to just live out on a table all the time.

This machine comes with automatic needle threading, a start/stop button, and a needle up/down feature. These are all features Federman recommended looking for in a computerized machine.

The New Home 720 weighs only 12 pounds, making it the lightest of our picks (the Janome DC5100, by comparison, weighs 18.7 pounds). The light weight makes this a great machine for travel or if you need to routinely stow your machine away in a closet. But it won’t be as stable as our other picks for sewing bigger projects like bed-sized quilts. A three-quarter-size machine like this will shake or jostle around on your table if you tackle anything heavy duty, like denim or canvas.

Great for quilting and bed-sized blankets

If you’re mostly interested in quilting, we like the Juki HZL-F300. It has a larger work surface than our other picks, which makes it better for sewing bed-sized quilts, and it’s heavy enough that it won’t move around on your sewing table if you’re sewing a large blanket.

The HZL-F300’s work area measures 8 inches wide, 12¼ inches long, and 4½ inches high off of the work surface (the Janome DC5100’s is shorter, narrower, and slightly lower). Overall, the Juki’s dimensions allow you to work on bigger projects, like queen- or even king-size bed quilts. Juki also makes an extension table you can buy to make the HZL-F300’s work surface even bigger, to about 12 inches wide and 19¼ inches long.

At 21 pounds, the Juki weighs more than all of our other picks (except the HV Opal 650), giving it more stability on your work table while you push large or thick projects through. That weight can be essential. Quilts are surprisingly heavy, and if you’re trying to get even stitches, you don’t want your sewing machine to budge and get pushed around by a giant blanket. This machine is specifically designed to stand up to weighty, thick projects.

Moderately priced and higher-end dealer-only machines

If you want the perks of buying from a dealer—like sewing classes, help troubleshooting problems, and annual maintenance—the Pfaff Smarter 260c is our top recommendation for a machine under $600. It has some advanced features, like a simple touchpad to select stitches, that you’d usually find only in higher-end machines. This Pfaff is the newest in the company’s Smarter line, which is basically designed to be the Apple of sewing machines. It’s super simple to use and looks sleek.

For a higher-end dealer machine you can grow into, we like the Husqvarna Viking Opal 650. If you sew a lot, even if you’re still learning, but aren’t used to a computerized machine, you may want to invest a little more on this one. It has lots of extra features that are actually useful for sewers at a wide range of skill levels, like automatic needle threading, a stop/start button, and the needle up/down feature. Plus, it has an outstanding warranty.

Check out our full guide to learn more about how we chose the best moderately priced and higher-end dealer machines.

This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from The Sweethome: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

12 gifts for your NSFW neighbor

We’re all adults here — no shame if you want to get a certain someone in your life something naughty for the holidays. First, the obvious: We brought together a team of male and female editors to research the best sex toys for both men and women, because yes, we know that’s where some of your minds went when we said naughty. But if a vibrator seems like a buzzkill, we also have recommendations for a vaporizer, VPN subscription and even a combination iPhone case/cigarette lighter.

For our full list of recommendations in all categories, don’t forget to stop by our main Holiday Gift Guide hub.

Scientists can directly observe alien planets with a new tool

Astronomers usually have to study exoplanets through roundabout ways, such as watching for the decrease in light when a planet crosses in front of a star. However, they’ll soon have a reliable way to observe those alien worlds directly. A Princeton-led research team has successfully tested CHARIS, a supercooled spectrograph instrument that isolates reflected light from large planets (bigger than Jupiter) to reveal their age, mass and temperature. The key is its use of a coronagraph that separates planetary light from the host star’s rays — effectively, it’s making sure the needle stands out from the haystack.

CHARIS has a narrow field of view (the team couldn’t even fit all of Neptune in the test run), so it’s most likely to be used for targeted observations rather than sweeping the sky. And when the planets have to be larger than Jupiter, they’re very likely to be gas giants rather than anything habitable. Still, the technology could be immensely useful when it becomes available to the wider scientific community in February 2017. So long as scientists have access to Hawaii’s Subaru Telescope, where CHARIS is located, they’ll have a relatively straightforward way to measure bigger exoplanets — not just confirm their existence.

Via: Universe Today

Source: Princeton

First Customers Begin to Receive New MacBook Pro With Touch Bar

The calendar has turned to Monday, delivery trucks have hit the streets, and the first customers around the world are now beginning to receive Apple’s new MacBook Pro with the all-new Touch Bar. Orders began shipping over the weekend, with deliveries starting today and continuing into next week for the earliest adopters.

A number of MacRumors readers are beginning to unbox their shiny new Mac, including user WayneShorter, who shared the above photo in our 2016 MacBook Pro order/shipping discussion topic. Likewise, Reddit user Xales received his new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar as seen below a few hours ago.

Those still anxiously waiting for their new MacBook Pro to be delivered can track their shipment on Apple’s orders page and on UPS’s website with a tracking number. Some customers have even taken to tracking UPS flights on FlightAware. When your new MacBook Pro arrives, be sure to share a photo.

Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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Phil Schiller Says Apple Tested and Rejected Touch Screen Macs, Finding It ‘Absurd’ on a Desktop

Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, recently continued the company’s stance against turning its desktop and laptop devices into touch screen-enabled computers, which some customers believe could be advantageous additions to the macOS platform. With the new addition of the “Touch Bar” on the MacBook Pro line, seen by some as a potential step towards a full-on Mac touch screen, many Apple executives have come out saying this isn’t the case.

Speaking with Backchannel, Schiller has now stated that a multi-touch display on a MacBook “wouldn’t be enough,” because it would begin a divide between MacBook and iMac. But, if the company implemented the same touch screen on a desktop it would “become absurd,” due to the iMac’s main source of user interaction — the keyboard and mouse or trackpad — residing too far away from where users would raise their hand to interact with the screen. Ultimately, Schiller said this line of thought is “lowest common denominator thinking.”

“We think of the whole platform,” he says. “If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn’t be enough — then the desktop wouldn’t work that way.” And touch on the desktop, he says, would be a disaster. “Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd.” He also explains that such a move would mean totally redesigning the menu bar for fingers, in a way that would ruin the experience for those using pointer devices like the touch or mouse. “You can’t optimize for both,” he says. “It’s the lowest common denominator thinking.”

All the same, Schiller confirmed that Apple has tried out touch screens on a Mac in its labs over the last few years and the company “absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do,” he said. “Our instincts were correct.” When asked whether the Touch Bar was the beginning of a larger influence by iOS on the macOS platform, Schiller said this was not the case.

When I suggested that this might be only the latest in a number of mobile innovations moving to the Mac, in an overall annexation of the Macintosh platform, Schiller pushed back, hard. “Its implementation is pure Mac,” he said. “The thought and vision from the very beginning was not at all, ‘How do we put iOS in the Mac?’ It was entirely, ‘How to you use the [iOS] technology to make a better Mac experience?’”

In regards to the MacBook Pro’s switch to Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, and the subsequent frustration by some users who fear needing to purchase and keep track of many dongles, Schiller said that “we’re absolutely more sure than ever that we’ve done the right thing,” because of the standard that USB-C is set to become. For context regarding the amount of cables available, MacRumors recently collected some USB-C adapters and dongles available from Apple and third-party accessory makers into a roundup.

Ultimately, Schiller said that the “fundamental difference” between the MacBook Pro’s naysayers and fans is divided between those who have not yet interacted with the laptop, and those who have. Thankfully, many more will be able to get a chance to use the MacBook Pro and Touch Bar as the first round of shipments have begun arriving to pre-order customers today.

Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Tag: Phil Schiller
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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Apple Seeds Third Beta of tvOS 10.1 to Developers

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming tvOS 10.1 update to developers for testing purposes, one week after seeding the second tvOS 10.1 beta and more than a month after launching tvOS 10.

Designed for the fourth-generation Apple TV, the third tvOS 10.1 beta can be obtained by connecting the Apple TV to a computer with a USB-C to USB-A cable, downloading and installing the software from a registered developer account via iTunes or Apple Configurator. Once a beta profile has been installed on the device through iTunes, new beta updates will be available over the air.

Many Apple TV owners are eagerly awaiting a promised Single Sign-On feature that will allow Apple TV users to sign in once with their cable credentials to access all available live cable content, and the feature was introduced in the first tvOS 10.1 beta.

The new “TV” app that was announced at Apple’s October 27 event was not included in the first two tvOS 10.1 betas, but it was introduced on iOS devices in the second iOS 10.2 beta, suggesting it could come to tvOS users soon. “TV” is meant to be a TV guide-style app that provides users with recommendations on what to watch and an easy way to discover new television content.

tvOS 10, for those unfamiliar with the operating system, brings features like improved search, expanded Siri capabilities, a dark mode, a Continuity option for using the iPhone for text input, automatic app downloads, quicker access to live TV, and more.

Update: Some users are having difficulty downloading the update, as their systems are reporting that an update is available but are stuck waiting to connect to the update server to download.

Related Roundups: Apple TV, tvOS 10
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Caution)
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Apple Seeds Third macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Beta to Developers

Apple today seeded the third beta of the upcoming macOS Sierra 10.12.2 update to developers, one week after releasing the second 10.12.2 beta and three weeks following the public release of macOS 10.12.1.

The third macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta is available for download through the Apple Developer Center and through the software update mechanism in the Mac App Store, but the Mac App Store appears to be having trouble updating apps for some people at the moment.

macOS Sierra 10.12.2 includes new emoji, introducing Unicode 9 characters like clown face, selfie, face palm, fox face, owl, shark, butterfly, avocado, pancakes, croissant, bacon and more, plus many profession emoji available in both male and female genders. Apple has also updated the artwork on many existing emoji, adding detail and making them look less cartoonish and more realistic.

There are few other changes aside from the addition of new emoji, but the 10.12.2 update also likely includes many bug fixes and performance enhancements to address issues that have popped up since the release of macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

Available since September, macOS Sierra is the latest Mac operating system. It includes Siri support, Apple Pay for the web, Universal Clipboard, Apple Watch auto unlocking, improved iCloud Drive integration, Picture-in-Picture multitasking, and dozens of smaller features that can be found in our macOS Sierra roundup.

Related Roundup: macOS Sierra
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