The only attachments that I recommend are those made for the machine by the specific manufacturer.  Bernina does make an attachment that works on some of their machines.  If you happen to have one of those machines, then I would suggest that the attachment is a good idea for reusing an old machine or for creating a single machine that can both felt and sew to take when traveling.  Brother also makes an attachment for some of their machines, but it does not use individual needles.  Of course, if you have one of these Brother machines hanging around, the Brother attachment might be a reasonable idea.  If, however, you are looking at an attachment made for any generic machine, I would be wary.  My concerns are as follows:

1)  All of the attachments of this type which I have seen advertised do not come with a needle guard.  I feel that this is a REAL safety issue.  All to often I find that my finger touch the guard when I am working.  Without the finger safety guard, I am sure I would have been punctured more than once by now.  I have also found that the needle guard helps to prevent bouncing of the fabric when it is being punched, so I am not sure how this would be controlled with one of the generic attachments.

2)  The needles on these attachment are spaced very far apart compared to the placement of the needles on the standalone machines.  On my Embellisher, I imagine that the 7 needles are in a space of just over 1/4th of a square inch.  The Janome, Huskystar and Pfaff have their 5 needles in about the same space.  The wider the needles are spread apart, the more likely you are to have holes poked in areas that you do not want.  It also result in having to move your project under the needles more since the needles are not concentrated in as small a space.

3)  All of the attachment that I have seen use a piece of foam instead of a throat plate.  All of the standalone machine use a throat plate.  Getting your project stuck in the foam could be a real problem (like some who needle felt by hand have come to know.)  There is nothing under the throat plate for the project to entangle with, so this is much less of a problem with one of the standalone machines or attachments made for a specific manufacturer's machine.

4)  Should you ever decide to use the machine again for sewing, you would have to do a very thorough cleaning if you have used one of the generic attachments.  You would also likely have to reassemble parts of the machine since you usually have to strip out parts of the sewing components when you put in the attachment.

 

With the prices of the standalone machines and the attachments for the Bernina and Brother machines as low as they are now, I would definitely recommend that route instead of a generic attachment.  I hope this helps.

The information on this page is merely the opinion of Denise Spanos.  This information is copyrighted.  All Rights reserved.  December 23, 2007.