The spare bedroom upstairs is not a sewing room. It is a spare bedroom with a six foot folding table pushed against the window, and since October 2023 that table has held a Brother SE1900 and not much else. I retired from the school office in June 2023. I had sewn garments as a teenager, stopped for about forty years, and wanted to monogram towels for my granddaughter Lily and for the December craft fair at St. Peter's. I assumed a machine would take over the room. It took over one end of a table.
Before I bought, I looked at embroidery-only machines and at the big freestanding setups in the back of the quilt shop. What decided it was floor space. The bedroom upstairs is not large, Dale keeps a file box in the closet, and the table has to fold down when his sister visits. I bought the Brother combo because it sews and embroiders in one housing, and I have not regretted giving up the second machine. Here are the ten reasons it works in that room, roughly in the order I noticed them.
The machine fits the room you already have
The Brother SE1900 is a sewing and embroidery combo in one housing: a 5 by 7 inch hoop field, 138 designs, 240 stitches, and 22.1 pounds of machine. Mine went up the stairs in my arms and onto a folding table, and it has stayed there ever since.
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It does the monogramming and the hemming from the same spot
The Brother SE1900 is a combo, and that is the reason the room works at all. It has 240 built-in sewing stitches and 138 built-in embroidery designs in the same housing. If I had bought embroidery only, I would still need a second machine for towel hems and mending, and a second machine means a second cord, a second spot, and a second thing to clear off the table. I gave away my mother's old machine decades ago, so this was going to be my only one either way.
At 23.19 inches deep, it sits at the end of a folding table
Measurements matter more than a feature list when the room is small. The machine is 23.19 inches deep, 13.43 inches wide and 11.54 inches tall. On our six foot table it takes the left end and leaves the right end for the hoop, the towel and my elbows. Nothing hangs over the edge. If you are measuring a table before you buy, measure the depth first, because that is the number that decides whether you can still use the rest of the surface.
I carried it up the stairs myself
Dale carries boxes and nothing else, and he was at work the afternoon it arrived. The machine weighs 22.1 pounds, so I opened the carton in the front hall, carried it up the stairs, and set it on the table without waiting for anyone. That sounds like a small thing. It is not, if your work space is on a second floor and the only person available to move a heavy machine is you.
The embroidery arm comes off and the table goes back to sewing
The box includes the embroidery arm and the embroidery foot, and both lift away. I leave the arm on most of the time and take it off maybe once a month, when something needs hemming or a seam needs mending. Ten minutes of work and the table is flat again. That is the difference between a room that does one thing and a room that does two, and the only cost is a place to set the arm down while you sew.
The screen is on the machine, so the laptop stays downstairs
There is a 3.2 inch LCD touchscreen on the machine, and that is where designs get chosen and settings get checked. My laptop does not live in the sewing room. When I want a design that is not built in, I put it on a USB stick, plug the stick into the port, and the laptop goes back down to the kitchen. One less screen, one less cord, one less thing to clear off the table before I can start.
138 designs and 11 fonts are already inside the machine
I expected to need a shelf of design cards or binders. The Brother SE1900 comes with 138 built-in designs and 11 embroidery fonts, and the fonts are what I use most, because most of what I make is names and monograms on hand towels and bath towels. Lily's fleece blanket had her name on it from the built-in alphabet. The only thing I store is the USB stick, and it lives in the drawer with the curved scissors.
A 5 by 7 inch field means hoops that hang on one hook
The embroidery field is 5 by 7 inches, which people will tell you is small. In a spare bedroom, small is the point. I bought the Sew Tech hoop set in March 2024, four plastic hoops with grids and adjustable metal screws on a blue hanging buckle, made to fit Brother 5 by 7 machines. The whole set hangs on a hook beside the table. The 4 by 4 and the second 5 by 7 do nearly all the work. The 1 by 2.5 has been on baby bibs a handful of times. The 5 by 12 has never been used, because the field is 5 by 7 and no hoop changes that. It stays on the buckle.
The needle threader and drop-in bobbin keep you out of the machine
Threading was the part I dreaded. The SE1900 has an advanced needle threader and a drop-in top bobbin, so the bobbin goes in from the top where I can see it, and the needle gets threaded without me leaning over the table with my reading glasses pushed up. I do that at the start of a session and then I forget about it. In a small room, the less time you spend bent over the machine, the longer you can stand there.
Thread and stabilizer store on a cart and a shelf, not across the floor
The Brothread 40 color kit came in November 2023, 40 spools of 40 weight polyester with a color chart, and the whole box lives on the rolling cart beside the table. Navy, white, a soft pink and a light blue do most of the baby items, and gold does the December towels. The HBI tear away sheets, precut 10 by 12, stay flat on the corner shelf. One sheet under a hand towel, two doubled under a thick bath towel. Nothing is stacked on the floor and nothing has to be moved to walk through.
One cord and one outlet strip, and the room is still a bedroom
The Brother machine is corded electric at 120 volts and it is the only thing on the strip against the wall. There is no air compressor, no second machine, no cabinet with a lift. The furniture in that room is a folding table, a rolling cart and a corner shelf, and when Dale's sister comes in December the table folds and the cart rolls into the closet. The machine carries a 25 year limited warranty, and in three years mine has not needed a thing.
What I'd Skip
Two things I would not buy again, and one I would buy sooner. The 5 by 12 hoop in the Sew Tech set has never touched fabric, because the Brother field is 5 by 7 and cannot use it, so if you already own a 5 by 7 hoop, buy the 4 by 4 and a second 5 by 7 and leave the big one in the package. The roll of cut away stabilizer I bought in spring 2024 has been used once, on a stretchy baby onesie, and it sits in the drawer taking up space that the tear away deserves. What I would buy sooner is the second 5 by 7 hoop. Hooping the next towel while the first one stitches is the only real time saver I have found, and it costs one hoop. I would also skip the idea that you need a dedicated room. You need a flat surface, an outlet and a door.
It is 23.19 inches deep and 22.1 pounds. The room did not have to change at all.
Start with the machine that fits the table you already own
Three years in, no repairs, and the table still folds when family visits. If your spare room has a window, an outlet and a flat surface, this is the Brother machine that lives there without asking for more.
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