I have two 10 Needle Brother Embroidery Machines, I purchased my PR1000e several years ago and was planning to get the PR1055X when it was released by Brother NZ in 2020 and sell my PR1000e but I’ve loved having two machines so much I’ve ended up keeping both! You may be wondering what all the fuss is about or why Brother 10 Needle machines are so popular so I thought I would outline a few of the features I’ve felt are absolute game changers for embroiderers – especially if you want to make items to sell!

1. The Snowman Positioning Function

One of my most frustrating parts of embroidery is lining my item up straight in my hoop (are you with me??) – it’s so time consuming! Especially if you’re trying to make money from your embroidery work, it’s a bit of a waste of time and so frustrating. The Snowman function is therefore my absolute favourite feature of the 10 Needle machines (the Stellaire XJ1, Stellaire XE1 and Luminaire XP2 both have this functionality too).

You may be wondering what this “snowman thing” is, in a nutshell it’s a sticker with two circles (which make it look like a snowman) and crosshairs you put onto your item to indicate the centre of your design. Your machine can look for this marker using the built in camera and adjust your design to the correct position automatically for you – pretty cool right!

Here’s a quick video I did showing how I use the Snowman tool on my PR1000e machine:

2. The Built In Camera

As I mentioned above, the 10 needle machines have a built in camera which I believe is completely unique to Brother embroidery machines (the Luminaire XP2 also has a built in camera and the Stellaire XJ1 and Stellaire XE1 use the camera on your phone – you can see how that works here).

Besides the Snowman function, you can also use the camera to scan a picture of your hoop to your machine to use as a background for manually moving your design around to the right spot AND you can also use a live view function to get a real time view of your item in your hoop for perfect placement.  There is a slight difference in the live view function between the PR1000e and the PR1055X – the PR1000e just gives you a crosshair view of your design in live view whereas the new PR1055X model shows your design in the live view, this function alone often makes me choose to use the newer model for trickier projects.

Check how cool this function is:

3. The Tubular Shape

You may be wondering what this means.  A regular embroidery machine has a flat bed design which means everything you get onto your machine needs to lay flat to get onto the machine which gets a bit tricky with small items like baby clothes and items that are round like hats and sleeves.  There are some ways to accomplish embroidering on some of these items but man you’ll drive yourself crazy if you need to do a few.  

The tubular shape of the multineedle machine means you only need to get your item over the small square bobbin area.

This makes it so much easier and faster to embroider a wide variety of items you may not be able to do on a flat bed machine.

Which leads me onto…

4. Variety of Hoops

Where do I even start here, there are so many options for the multineedle machines to help make all kinds of projects easier to do!  You can even get a 360x360mm Jumbo multi position hoop for big projects!

Brother Sash Frame 

Honestly I didn’t expect to love this hoop as much as I do but the individual magnets so great for tricky projects like this vest I embroidered recently.  I was going to use a Maggie Magnetic Hoop for it but the seams were so chunky it wouldn’t sit flat so I used the sash frame instead and placed the magnets strategically where I needed them.

Robot Frame 

This is the best frame for those really fiddly jobs like dog collars, beanies, pockets etc and it’s so fast to use in conjunction with the camera.

Find out more about the Robot frame and see it in action here:

5.  10 Needles

And last but not least, the feature we all THINK we’re getting the 10 needle for – it has 10 needles which means you can pop 10 colours on your machine, pop your item on, press GO and walk away.  The PR1055X machine even connects wirelessly to an app on your phone so you can check the progress of your item or be notified if there’s a thread break while you’re on the other side of the house!  How cool is that!

That’s my top 5 things I love about my Brother 10 Needle Embroidery Machines. If a new embroidery machine has been on your wishlist for a while, get in touch with me and let’s make it happen for you!