Brother Sewing UK

What’s that coming up the lane? It’s my lovely-jubbly Brother XP1 Luminaire – or Lumi-Loo as she will come to be known. I live in a fairly remote area, so my delivery guy had to put the extremely large and heavy box on to a trolley and trudge up the lane to my house.   Fortunately he was also sweet enough to lug it into the house for me. Once unpacked and set up in my sewing room, I simply could not decide what to do first – so many new and exciting features to choose from! Should I explore the new quilting fills in Design Centre or sew out one of the many new designs (including Disney!)? Perhaps I should take look at the new projector feature which makes placement of designs a breeze? Maybe I should sew out a huge design on the giant, new hoop? In the end, I decided to explore Design Centre and one of the new designs that particularly intrigued me; the patchwork applique set (image to the left). These are all such beautiful patterns – just imagine how fantastic ...

Hello Brother readers! I’m back again with another blog post. This time I *need* to share with you all the sweatshirts I have sewn lately to keep toasty warm this wintertime! At home, I’m the one creeping around the thermostat to knock it up a degree or two – I just feel the cold so much! Unfortunately, I can’t rely on central heating 24/7, which has led me down the road of testing out a number of different sweatshirt patterns to see which I love most. So, I wanted to share with you my thoughts and findings so that you too may embrace the joy of making a cosy sweatshirt! Firstly, I’d like to say how much I love sweatshirts for being a nice, ‘quick-sew’ project. They really don’t take long, so you can enjoy the rewards of making something yourself in super-quick time, especially if, like me, you sew on a speedy, easy-to-use Brother Overclocker 3034DWT! Being a working mum of a toddler, I don’t exactly have much time to myself to sew, so sweatshirt-making on the Brother has been ...

I recently took delivery of Brother’s new, top-of-the-range XP1 Luminaire sewing and embroidery machine. Having previously had the Innov-is XV machine, I was excited to explore the XP1’s many new features. The Luminaire XP1 has a large, high-resolution screen featuring touch gestures akin to smartphones and tablets, which means you can use your finger and thumb to pinch and zoom, resizing images and designs with ease. If you have owned or used the Innovis XV, much of the user interface will be familiar to you, and the XP1 has an even cleaner look and feel thanks to some of the icons now being tucked away in drop-down menus. The screen is very clear, and the new fonts are easy to read. The machine itself is pretty big! There is now a generous 13.1” from needle to arm, which is great for quilters like me. With the embroidery unit attached, you will need to make sure you leave sufficient room behind the machine to accommodate the largest embroidery frame (it is 1...