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I have a babylock, made by brother. brother makes some wonderful machines at a good price. I have my own little business too, I suggest you go with a professional machine because the wear and tear on a smaller machine will end up costing you too much. I have more than 12 million stitches on my machine and it is just 2 years old.

From company to company, you will see different formats for the designs but a computer program to change the format of the design is not very expensive. I use 4 different computer programs myself along with a digitizing program so I can make my own designs. Look around at several, make sure you look at brothers Palette program, it is very nice. Also tje Corel Draw is a very good program.

I have a Husqvarna Rose, it has been a good little machine doing both embroidery and sewing. One thing I would change if I could is...it doesn't have a LCD screen to show you the design as you are stitching it out.

The Rose only does a 4x4 design which really limits what designs you can do. My next machine, (much to my husbands dismay) will have a least a 5x7 embroidery field.

I have talked with other ladies about their machines, there are so many different opinions out there. Everyone loves their machine for the things it does.

I think your best bet would be to really shop around, both in person and on the internet. It wouldn't hurt to ask about the warranties either. Look on the internet and see if you can find any pro's or con's about other machines.

Mine only had a 1 year warranty. It periodically will snap a thread and keep on stitching. If I am not right beside it, I sometimes miss it and have to back up one stitch at a time. Some machines let you got in blocks of 10 stitches at a time.

A good tip: trim your upper threat at each colour change, it makes for much less work at the end of your project.

Hope these answers you get help you decide what to buy.

I started my embroidery biz 14 yrs ago with a Singer XL 1000 and then went to Viking Designer 1 -both machines were good and real workhorses but - we now have commercial machines - Melco Amaya brand.

I would recommend that you go to a small commercial machine - usually they say portable - like a Happy and I think Tajima, Toyota and possibly even Melco has a small machine - Some of them are 1 needle heads - some are 4 needle. I would recommend the 4 needle variety as you will be shocked at how much the thread color changes will slow you down. Commercial machines stitch MUCH faster than the home varieties and I think if you shop around the price diff won't be that big. Don't hesitate to look at 'reconditioned' machines as sometimes they are your very best buy!

I believe all brand machines have their own digitizing and OS software - however, Embird is a digitizing software program that is well-supported (just search yahoo groups for Embird) and also is very user friendly. It is also about 1/10th of the price of some of the software out there. The website is just www-embird-com. dots intstead of dashes. Embird is compatible with almost all embroidery machines either home or commercial!

Also there are absolutely tons of great embroidery groups on Yahoo Groups - just search for Embroidery or machine embroidery. So much info to be had and help for every problem!

:) Good luck! AdoreMy is my website name incase you have more questions. I don't think they want me to post my email address on here lol :) Jill

I really like the Viking Products. I purchased a machine and liked it so much, that i ended up selling them for a while.

Their Embroidery Machines really do a nice job and you should check it out. As with any machine, I would always actually sew on it before buying it, to make sure the quality is what you would like.

I have the Bernina Deco 330, which is strictly an embroidery machine. I am very pleased with the quality of the stitches. I used the mini magic box to convert files to the one my machine uses.

Good luck in your business!

I have a Brother PR 600 and I really like it and I have done things from Heavy Carhart coats to tote bags and have been very happy with it.