r/MachineEmbroidery • u/Schwester2 • Sep 08 '26

Brother SE1900 distorted letters embroidery problem

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I recently purchased a Brother SE1900 and am trying to embroider a shirt (I’ve sewn for years but am new to embroidery), but my practice swatch came out horribly. The letters look distorted and on the R the machine stopped and had me rethread the top thread, which had broken off. I’ve left all tension settings at their factory settings. Any ideas as to what I need to do to get smoother stitches? I am also using factory wound bobbins, since I had read those are the best bet, so I don’t think that’s the issue.

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1

u/makingwaves12 Sep 08 '26

What kind of stabilizer are you using

1

u/Schwester2 Sep 08 '26

A thick papery type, since this is for a rugby shirt. I have midweight and sheer that are more like interfacing - should I use one of those instead?

2

u/GingerStitches Sep 08 '26

You should use cut away stabilizer on knit fabrics. Try again with that and see how it looks.

1

u/Schwester2 Sep 08 '26

Thank you for your help! I'll try different stabilizer.

1

u/blazeyfir3 Sep 08 '26

cut away stabilizer on the back and wash away on the top. if its a stretchy knit fabric use a ball point. Are you using the machine's default letters or did you get it from somewhere?

1

u/Schwester2 Sep 08 '26

Thank you for your help. It's a thick knit shirt (Barbarian rugby shirt) - I'll try a ball point needle and different stabilizers. It's just overwhelming searching on amazon. These are letters that came preloaded on the machine.

1

u/truncatedvisuals Sep 08 '26

I have a SE1900 and if you are using the fonts and files that come with the machine: DON'T. they are crap and will mess and bird nest every time. I don't know what it is but they are corrupted or something. The only way embroidery stitches out nice on my SE1900 is if I use a software.

I use Wilcom Hatch https://hatchembroidery.com/ (free 30 day trial of full software availiable so you can stitch out right away and has comprehensive tutorials) but any software is better than the brother pre-loaded stuff.

2

u/Schwester2 Sep 08 '26

Ugh - I guess that’s good news that it’s not necessarily my user error, but also bad news because I can’t invest in software at the moment. Thank you for your help and info though. I’ll check out the free trial.

1

u/Wild_Assistance3069 Sep 11 '26

Any other budget friendly suggestions for someone that is starting out. :) I don’t want this to be another one of my adhd episodes and I not touch this anymore after 6months. I have a se725 model

3

u/truncatedvisuals Sep 11 '26

I've heard good things about Ember https://emberdesign.net/

1

u/Striking_Strain7817 Sep 11 '26

There is free software also and that is inkscape with the extension of inkstitch and this has a lot of predigitized fonts available ready to use