I've been teaching my daughter how to sew, and we've made some really cute creations together.
But we wanted to take it to the next level, so we decided to look into embroidery machines.
I wanted to get something that was easy to use, easy to maintain, had a large enough
embroidery area for different types of projects, and the ability to do different types of fabrics,
including hats. She wanted color! And that's how we ended up with the Buy Mirror embroidery machine.
It's an entry-level commercial machine, and the first question you might have is, why commercial?
The first reason is that everything I read online said that you should get the biggest
embroidery area that you can afford, and this can do up to 20 by 14 inches. And secondly,
I wanted to be able to do hats, and most small machines that are for at-home hobby use aren't
able to do that. The other thing that she wanted was multiple colors, which meant we needed a
multi-needle machine. And lastly, Creator Warehouse recommended it. It's a no-brainer at that point.
They had friends in the embroidery industry who said that the Buy brand was basically a copy of
the Tajima brand, which is the ultimate embroidery brand, but at a fraction of the cost.
And this checked out. When I went to the local suppliers, I saw Brother brand machines where
they had six needles that were double the cost of the Buy Mirror machine, which has 15 needles.
The online ordering process was actually really simple. I just went online, placed my order,
and I actually picked it up at a local warehouse and saved $800 in shipping, which was amazing.
But it meant that Linus and two other guys had to finagle this machine out of the back of the
minivan, which was not great because it weighs about 260 pounds, just for the top half. Assembling
it was really easy, though. The top half didn't require very much assembly. We just had to install
these handrails. And then for the bottom half, it was as simple as a few thumb screws, and we added
the feet and the wheels on the bottom so that we can actually move the machine. And it also came
with all of these accessories that you see here. So the first one was the tool kit, a set of bobbins
that are pre-wound for us, some extra needles, some stabilizer, some oil and sewing oil.
Some threads. Oh yeah, it came with four different threads. It also came with two sets of hoops.
The two sets are exactly the same, and I think the reason for that is because when you have
something installed and the embroidery machine is working on it, you can be getting ready to prep
the next hoop to use. And it also came with the hat stations to be able to do hats. We haven't
used them yet, but we're excited to try. Now it's time to turn it on. After lots of reading online
and watching tons of YouTube videos from their website, I finally figured out how to use this
machine. The first step is what Kat did, which was turn it on. This machine actually uses a regular
120 volt power plug, so we didn't have to do anything special for the electrical in here
to get it to work, which is amazing considering most people who buy this machine start with it in
their home as kind of a side hustle business. The next step, oiling it. We see like a little
knob in here. You pull on it and pull out the bobbin. Here's the bobbin, thread's low. We should
note that. And then you put three to five drops of sewing oil in the bobbin area, and we can pop
it back in there and push till it clicks. Next, we have to oil this part. I'll leave these to it on.
Voila! One thing that I find really annoying is that this plate doesn't have pre-made holes in
it so that you don't have to unscrew it and screw it back on every single time you oil it. I've seen
lots of people make their own and there's just pre-done holes. See that hole? You put
three to five drops in that little hole, then oil all along the edge. She's in charge of servicing
the machine, as you can tell. I don't do that part. The next step was installing our different
threads, but we also had to program the different colors in here so that it knew which ones we
were selecting when we were changing it on the screen. I select number one, so now I get to choose
out of all these 18 pages of colors which color matches the most to my number one. And then when
you're done, click save. We had to do that for all 15 colors and you can see that the machine
is numbered here so that you can see which needle belongs to which one, as well as in the back here
when you're installing so that you can know which one back here corresponds to here because I lose
track of all the different threads. The next step after that was connecting it to Wi-Fi so that we
could upload patterns. It did come with a little USB stick, but it just seemed way simpler to connect
it to Wi-Fi and get started. This is the online software. It's very, very basic, but it works.
You just click upload pattern and then you drag and drop into here or you can click here and open
whatever file it is that you've got. They're also working on their own digitizing software, but it
is extremely basic right now. But mostly what I do is I get patterns from online websites and then I
upload it here to combine them all because this one here is too basic to really do anything. It does
say that it's in beta right now so hopefully in the future there will be way more functions. So the
next step is to choose what pattern you want to use. You have to do a tension test to make sure
that the threads on the top and the bobbin are at the right tension so you get nice clean lines.
Now that the machine is all set up, we have to actually get the fabric all set up to put
inside the machine. One thing that's really nice about these frames is that the sizes are
written right on the frame and that corresponds with the machine so it's really easy to make sure
that you've picked the right one. So you'll need two pieces of stabilizer that fit in the hoop.
The reason you need stabilizer is because it makes the fabric more stable when the machine
is going back and forth through the fabric. Grab your stabilizer and then you put the fabric on
top and then you put the front one on and then you press. You tighten the back of the hoop.
The little notches here, they slide under the little things on the handlebars
and you push it forward until it clicks into place on the little rectangle shaped holes.
Then if you have like a whole bunch of drapey extra like this, you just slide it over this little
bar here so then it doesn't get dirty if your floor is not the cleanest like ours.
We forgot to select all the different colors. Do you want to show them that? What I like to do is just go one, two, three, four, all the way up.
And the reason she has to do this is because it doesn't actually highlight
which area you're changing so it's really difficult to know. So this is our workaround
for color coding it. You make sure that this says AA if you're doing a test.
Do you know what AA is? Yeah, it's like automatically automatic and then we click ready.
Sometimes it's handy to run a trace and the reason you run a trace is to make sure
that your embroidery is within the hoop. The last thing you want to do is have a needle
hit the edge of the hoop and for your design not to fit. Then you press the green button.
Oh wait, before we hit that button let's talk about our sponsors. There it goes.
One thing that I forgot to mention is the tension test isn't just a one-in-done thing.
You actually have to run a tension test every time you do a new fabric. We're not going to finish
that one on camera because it takes too long to do but we can show you some of the ones we did in
the past. You're supposed to have a third of white in the middle and then a third of the color on
either end and that's how you know you've got the right tension. This one here is probably perfect.
After thinking that we got the tension right it was time to start our first stuffy.
We tried this one but you can see that we still didn't get it quite right
and there were a lot of things we learned along the way. So when I go to select the color
I find four that's the insides of the ears. I want to turn that pink. So now the insides of the
ears are pink. Should we hoop it and get it ready to embroider? Sure. There's actually three different
types of stabilizers. So the one that came with the machine is the tear away stabilizer. When you're
done the embroidery you turn it around and to remove the stabilizer you just tear it off. There's
also cutaway stabilizer which is actually more stiff and in order to take that apart you have to
cut it. There's also washable stabilizer which some people use to put on top of a design and then
to get rid of it you wash it away with water. So I haven't actually looked at this pattern
and you said something about how there's applique. Applique is when you put another piece of fabric
on top and embroider that piece to the original piece. This is like green fabric and we added
brown on top. You could theoretically just embroider brown but the reason we did it with
the fabric is because we like the material and the feel of it and also because it saves a lot
of thread because it's such a big space. Exactly. Do you want to run a trace to make sure it's going
to fit? Sure. And it's like going around and looking to see if it's well traced.
Right now it's just doing like a little trace of the part that we're going to applique.
Now we have the white that we're going to use. A somewhat large-ish piece just in case. So you
just like place it on top of the red shape and make sure a nap is right.
We haven't, there's actually an applique feature on here but we haven't figured out
how to use that either so I just stick my hand in here and I try to cut it.
You shouldn't. I know, sorry. Now go.
The little screen shows what it's done so far.
Oh we got an error. Tension break. So when a tension break happens it doesn't actually tell
you what's wrong so you kind of have to figure out yourself. My guess because we noticed that the
bobbin was low earlier was that we've read out of thread on the bottom. Thank you.
This machine does have the ability to actually go backwards or forwards in stitches and retrace an
area that got this. Theoretically you should be able to put the hoop in, set it to go and just
take off and do something else for a bit and then come back later to a finished design.
One thing that I do recommend is just making sure you're nearby. You can be doing something else
but the minute you hear an error like that it's nice to be able to come back right away and deal
with it otherwise you'll come back two hours later expecting it to be done and then it's not
done because you have to deal with the error. Does it give you a time estimate? It does not give you
a time estimate but theoretically you can figure that out because it tells you the number of stitches
this design is and then it tells you how many stitches per minute you're going or you're running
at so this design is about 5,000 stitches. Right now we're running it at 700 stitches per minute
so about seven minutes. I know that you I say you can go away and do something else but honestly
it's mesmerizing to just sit here and watch. We've had to do a little bit more complicated
troubleshooting before for example we couldn't get our laser to start working but watching the
online videos and honestly the Facebook community has been amazing. There have been a couple times
where I've reached out to the support team on WhatsApp and they were in a different time zone
so it took a little bit longer to respond to me but when they did respond to me it was back and
forth really fast. Some machines do have local suppliers and technicians that can help repair
but I think this machine their intention is that it's all DIY and you figure it out yourself
but what happens if a part breaks? That's the part that I'm not sure. Do they ship it to me?
How long is that going to take? Is it going to be easy for me to figure out? So far I haven't had
any of those issues. Everything has been really simple day-to-day operation issues but if a part
inside here breaks what do we do? We have to learn how to digitize so right now we are just
buying embroidery files. It's done. Yes it is done. Yeah right now we're just buying embroidery
files and they cost maybe like three to five dollars each time but that's still three to five
dollars each time. So recently I downloaded a free software called Inkscape and Inkstitch
and I've been trying to do my own files but it's been it's been a really tough learning curve.
Let's tear the tear away so you grab it pretty much. I feel like every time we use the machine
we're learning something new whether it's learning a new fabric or learning a new design where it
sews itself together which is cool or learning how to applique. What else have we learned? Well
we learned how to hoop the fabric. Yeah I feel like that's a constant learning process. So the
end goal for us here is to a learn something new together and b start a side hustle so I can teach
her about business. She's had people request animals or people before and so if we can turn her
sewing hobby and embroidery hobby into something that funds her next hobby that's a plus in my books.
In order to run the side hustle though there's stuff that we have to figure out consumables
like where do I get blank hats maybe lttstore.com and blank shirts or sweaters. I also have to figure
out where to buy stabilizer all the different types of stabilizer that we talked about earlier.
I might need to look into getting better hoops if it takes this long every single time to hoop
something that's not very efficient but I feel like all of that is to come later once we get the
basics going and part of the basic that we need to figure out is pricing. There are tons and tons
of guides out there including from by itself or from Maggie Frames one of the magnetic hoop
manufacturers and there's lots of online posts in the Facebook embroidery chat that go back and forth
about hey how do you price for this or how do you price for that. I've seen people say that they charge
about $15 for 5,000 stitches if we're running at 800 stitches per minute that's approximately $140
now that sounds like a lot but we haven't factored in any of the consumables and my time yet
or the cost of the machine or rent if you're renting a space so lots to figure out still
but it sounds like it could be something really good. I mean look how far we've come so far from
doing little felt eyes to doing little embroidered eyes so I think we'll get there. So how much does
it all cost? Well it was about $5,400 but I saved $800 because I picked it up so it was about $4,600
and that sounds like a lot and it is a lot but when you consider some of the other machines that
were capable of doing the same things they were literally about $20,000 to $40,000 so it's a huge
savings from that perspective. Even the at-home machines were about $800 to start and they only
did a single color which meant that every single time you wanted to change a color you have to
change the thread which is extremely time-consuming especially if you're actually trying to turn
this into a side hustle. So I'm hoping once we figure out the next learning curve for this
side hustle thing and pricing and all that we'll actually be able to help recoup some of that cost.
And here's the finished product now I'm going to fill it up with stuffing and then I get a needle
and thread and I just so close the hole. That is so cute. Thanks for watching make sure to
check out LTTstore.com. Bye!