Intoducing myself and a few questions

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Welcome to our group, Pearl. I also use lingerie thread, which I buy through

and/or When I received my embroidery/sewing machine, the Pfaff7560, I was given some Madeira threads, which is excellent. No affiliated with any company, just a happy, satisfied customer. Emily

Your Brother uses pes files. However, I think pec files are also compatible. I'm not really sure about this, but I think I've sewed out designs that were saved as pec files. Now the bobbin question: bobbin thread is, in my opinion, one of the most important factors in how your design will sew out. The thread should be thin. I have had good results with Brother bobbin thread and lingerie thread I bought from Nancy's Notions. However, again in my opinion, nothing can beat the NEB prewound bobbins. They hold more thread than I could ever wind on a bobbin and they are wound smooth and even. Since I have used these, I never have a problem with bobbin thread showing on the top. And I personally wouldn't waste a lot of money on memory cards. Invest in an Ultimate Box and an Ultimate card or two. You can download so many designs from the net, many of them free, that it will pay for itself in no time.

Iris

Julie, thanks for the welcome and the feedback. I will have to check and see if one of the fabric stores up in the city carries lingerie thread....and tomorrow will not be soon enough. I have already used up the small amount that came with the machine.

Thanks for the feedback, Emily. Maderia seems to be popular. I have been poking around the net looking for a good supplier.

Iris, thanks for the clarification on the file format and the info on the prewound bobbins. Do you know which size bobbin to order for the PE150?

And, I have already ordered the Ultimate box with one card. I can't wait for that to come. I think I have already spent more than the cost of the machine on "accessories and threads"!

.PEC stands for Personal Embroidery Card and the images from the cards are in .PEC format. Other than that they are pretty much the same.

There are a few other types of interest to BBD embroiderers, and they are .PEL and .PEM which are interim files in the digitizing process. The L is for Line, but I can't remember what the M is for. I sort of remember that the S in .PES is for Stitching, but I could be hallucinating.

As far as bobbin thread, I use Brother bobbin thread, or NEBs bobbins. The NEBS, size L are really nice, holding a lot and nice thread. I have had bad luck with sideless prewounds, and medium luck with other brands of sided pre wounds.

I have also successfully embroidered monograms and the like using embroidery thread in the bottom. I wouldn't do anything too dense that way, though.

HTH,

DaveJ

Welcome to the wonderful world of machine embroidery! Always something else interesting to buy/try! Do you have stabilizer? That's very important too. There are a zillion kinds. Cutaway, tearaway, self-stick, iron on, hydrostick (water makes it stick). You just have to read whatever you can find on sites that sell it, and then experiment. I've collected "one of each" at this point.

As far as the bobbins, NEB only makes one size that I know of. They're plastic sided, I think "L". I bought mine from

a while back. This sitealso explains a little bit about stabilizer.Have fun!

Iris

For those of you who use the prewound bobbins, do you have any idea why my store would say to absolutely not use them when I inquired? I should have asked them then, but being brand new to the craft at the time, I assumed they knew what they were talking about. Since then, I've read of so many people who've used the prewounds with great success. Julie

There seems to be some controversy about prewounds. I never asked at the store where I bought my machine, because I didn't know such a thing existed. I bought a kit at the store which included a cone of embroidery thread. This thread proved awful, but I didn't realize that it was the problem with my stitchouts. I thought my machine needed adjustment, until I went to my free lesson. One of the things we did was wind bobbins and the teacher provided odds and ends spools of bobbin thread (I got a spool of Brother to use.) I couldn't believe the difference! No more bobbin thread on the top. The Brother thread was thinner than what I got in my kit. After that I tried different bobbin threads and had the best luck with lingerie thread. I started reading an embroidery forum and everyone there seemed to swear by the NEB prewounds. Not having heard that they were allegedly bad for the machine, I bought a gross. They work great. Since then I've heard tales that they are bad, that they wreck the tension, etc. As far as I am concerned, if they wreck the tension, I'll take the machine in for adjustment. It would be well worth it because my stitchouts are one hundred percent nicer with the prewounds. Plus, they manage to get a LOT more thread on them than you could ever wind yourself. I was always changing the bobbin before. Now I can do several average designs before having to change it.

If you want my opinion, admittedly unscientific, I think that the stores may discourage you from prewounds because they don't sell them!

Iris (always had a suspicious mind!)

Pearl, I have the same machine you do, and I read somewhere in the manual that you are NOT to use prewound bobbins, their use will also void the warranty. I bought a bag of 100 genuine brother bobbins (empty) on Ebay for around $15. I then adjusted the bobbin stop on the machine to fill the bobbins more completely, I wind about 15-20 of them and have a good start on a few days work. The brother manual also recommends 100% spun polyester thread for bobbins. I have also used the same rayon thread I am using on the design, either works great for me. I can usually find serger thread in my area, which is spun poly. Even most stores like Joanne have it. Hope you are enjoying your new toy! Steve

Thank, Steve. I was hoping that someone with the same machine would chime in. Being very frugal, I would rather wind my own bobbins but I did not know where to start. I did order a few of the NEBs to try. I will let you know how they work on the PE150. Pearl

Pearl,

Please keep me in mind when u give your report on the NEB prewounds...I have a D1 and am very interested in ordering them if they work well. Hang on to my email address and feel free to send me any general questions u might have. I don't know as much as some of the pros here but if I know the answer, I will be happy to share.