Monday, July 30, 2018

REVIEW of Brother Sewing Machine LX 3817


Brother Sewing Machine LX 3817
by PangNya

 


       Hi everyone! Are you looking for new sewing machine! Well this is my quick review of the LX3817.  So sorry about the video above I did the review when I was live on Facebook so I jumped around quite a bit.   Unfortunately my other brother that I had for probably maybe over 8-10 years broke.  What I think happened was that my needle actually broke and fell into the hole.  I wasn't even able to crank the side knob. I would shake the machine and every time the needle moved a little I would be able to turn the knob but once it got seeded in the hole again then it would be stuck. 




I opened everything up and unscrewed the thing but I just could not get to the turning bobbin holder on the inside. I wanted so do this review for anyone who is thinking about purchasing this sewing machine. 

Walmart.com



       When I bought the sewing machine it was on sale at Walmart.com for $55. I would recommend checking online first to see if you would get a better deal than just buying it in store. They can do a price match and will honor the price as long as its on Walmart.com.  Today I looked and its back to its original price of $72.00.  

WHY I RETURNED IT: ONE REASON


This machine was NOT made for heavy fabrics! 

       I guess this machine would be okay for light fabrics but honestly I think you should just save your money and spend an extra $20 and get the more expensive one.  
      Lets talk about needles. I usually sew with thick or normal thickness material so I never buy the blue or orange color needles.  The orange needle is for light weight material like chiffon. It is also a thinner needle so it pokes smaller holes in the fabric. 

Walmart.com
Google.com
      Schmetz is the brand that I purchase. It comes in a pack of 5 purple needles.  Make sure you check the bands on the needle becausse they also sell a pack that comes with all 3 kinds of needle. Another pointer is that at Joann they sell these needles way in the back by the scissors. If you check by the actual sewing machines the only universal needles you'll see are the ones by Singer which are a lot more expensive.  These are my to go to because of the price and the ability to buy just one color/ type of needle. 


BACK TO THE REVIEW:

      For this machine, I think I changed my needle maybe maybe at least 10 times with sewing an apron.  My needle would get misaligned and then it would hit the bottom metal plate and then break the needle.  This machine I believe would be better if you wanted to do some kind of embroidery because the needle is very unstable. The needle is very easy to push around.  



       Here is a picture of just the reverse button. To reverse so you just push the button down. This makes your fabric go backwards. So you are able to backstitch. Always remember to backstitch so that your fabric won't unravel. 



     Here is a picture of the dail that is on the sewing machine. As you can see numbers six through 11 are just a standard straight stitches. Number is 12 through five are zigzag stitches. Number one is a stitch where you can make a button. You choose each setting to where you want to start the stitch and you can create a button hole that way. My go to's are definitely number 11, number 10, and number five. That's basically all I use on this machine.


        
        Here  I want to show you guys when I was sewing the canvas apron. It's pretty thick fabric. It's basically four pieces of very thick fabric together. What happens is the needle will get misaligned and it will hit the bottom of the metal plate. When that happens my needle breaks. Again as I mentioned above I always use the purple needle. Which is the strongest needle and is made for heavy duty material. 
       As you can see in the picture below the needle is hitting the bottom plate and when that happens then the needle breaks. See video to see it happen.  I believe this happens because this machine the 
piece that's holding the needle is very flimsy it's not held in place and you are easily able to move that piece back-and-forth left and right. . Versus my old sewing machine I was not able to do that. This machine is more for embroidery where are you can move the hand piece where it holds the needle very easily but the thing is that this machine doesn't even have embroidery settings. So I don't know why they made it that way for this machine.  

The needle easily gets misaligned and hits the bottom which breaks the needle.



HERE IS HOW YOU FIX IT 

         How you can fix this problem is you want to pull the needle to the right and then pull it forward towards you.  Its almost like a jigsaw puzzle where you have to push it just right so it realigns. 


          I returned it the next day because I was not going to be wasting more needles when sewing thick material.  Another interesting thing I found was that when I looked up a similar machine on Sam's Club it actually states light weight full-size sewing machine.  So I think it is misleading that Walmart does not state that this machine may just be made for light weight fabric.

 "it actually states light weight full-size sewing machine ..."


      What I ended up doing was going on eBay and buying my exact same machine that I had because it is a discontinued model. It is the Brother LX2500. I noticed on the LX2500 machine the piece where it holds the needle does not move left or right or forward or back it just stays right in the center and you can't move that piece at all. So a pointer when looking at sewing machines depending on what your main use will be is to CHECK THE NEEDLE PIECE.  Get on that you can move it side to side and back and forth for embroidery but get one that does move for regular straight sewing. 

Brother LX2500 to the rescue!

 





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