Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The XR9000 is very lightweight, I don't know if that makes it less robust or not- it seems pretty sturdy but I would not use it for leather. The sewing mechanism is wonderful- very quiet and soft, like cutting through butter. Foot pedal is responsive and the speed limit slider works great. There's also a button control but for whatever weird reason you can not use the start/stop button while the pedal is plugged in; I don't foresee that button getting a lot of use.
There's a reverse/reinforce button which unfortunately is a temporary switch only- not a toggle. It can be used in conjunction with the foot pedal or you just hold the button down and it will go in reverse at a slow speed.
Several extra presser feet are included, e.g. buttonhole, buttonstitch, zipper, blind hem. The one thing I am missing is a quilting guide. There's a slot for it in the foot but it has to be purchased separately. While the accessories are fine, the accessory storage is not. There's a front panel section that you have to pull out and then inside there's a plastic pouch with all the goodies. You have to keep the stuff in the pouch or they'll fall out of the machine. For $0.20 more Brother could have added a proper compartment with a hinge- instead they took a very cheap and impractical storage approach.
Lighting is provided by a bright but focussed white LED. I am somewhat spoiled by having a high wattage light bulb in the previous machine which lit up the entire working area. The XR9000 LED lights up the presser foot really well but that's about it. The "automatic needle threading" is not automatic, but still extremely useful (I keep missing the eye when trying to do it manually).
Even though I wound 3 bobbins I still can't tell whether the machine has an automatic stopping mechanism or just slows down a lot once the bobbin is full. Either way you can run the winding at full speed for a minute and it's quite noticeable once it's complete. The bobbins are full-size and top-loading. There's a somewhat tricky part about catching a hook when loading the bobbin which is not well explained in the manual. The first time I missed that which resulted in unbalanced stitches; reloading the bobbin more carefully took care of it. Another nice feature is that you don't have to pull up the lower thread before you can start to sew.
The stitch patterns are plentiful and half of them look quite nice. The other half has weird default settings where the default stitch length is too long, you can adjust that in the display but it still strikes me as odd. The monogramming feature works- it's fixed size, fixed font and does not look all that great. The XR9000 does not have any adjustable settings for presser foot height or pressure. However, the included default presser foot has some kind of spring adjustment built in which is supposed to help with thick fabric layers. I have not had a chance to try it out yet. The manual and instructional DVD are great and cover all the essentials.
EDIT- 2 months later: I have been having problems with thin fabric veering off to the side which made it impossible to do blind hems or other straight stitches with tight tolerances. For 2 months I thought this was me using it wrong until I brought it to a local store. As it turns out the machine shipped with some defects- the shank was slightly angled and the feed dog timing was off. Repair was $60 and came with a warning by the mechanic that the Brother machines are not particulaly reliable due to lack of solid metal construction. Machine loses 1 star for this and the fact that Brother does not have many authorized service centers.
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With 80 built-in utility, decorative and heirloom stitches and 120 stitch functions, the XR-9000 is the ideal sewing machine for embellishing virtually everything from clothing to home décor items and for creating unique quilt designs. Equipped with a large back-lit LCD screen with computerized stitch selection and a unique flip-stitch guide, you can use the built-in sewing font for lettering, select one of the eight styles of one-step auto-size buttonholes, or use the oversized wide table to accommodate larger quilting projects. Lightweight and portable, the machine features a built-in thread cutter, Quick-Set bobbin, and one-touch start, stop and reverse features. The oversized wide table accommodates quilting and larger projects, and a hard cover protects your machine. Additional features include a unique flip stitch guide, super-wide (7mm) zigzag and decorative stitches, automatic needle threading, built-in thread cutter, fast, automatic bobbin winding, one-step bobbin replacement with quick set drop-in bobbin, and one-touch start/stop/reverse operations. Operates with or without foot control. Drop feed for free motion quilting to create free-form or traditional quilt patterns. Machine also features variable needle position and sewing speed control, and built-in stretch, quilting, decorative, and heirloom stitches. Lightweight with built-in handle for portability. Includes instruction booklet in English and Spanish. 25-year limited warranty.
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