I have just come back from a demonstration of the new Janome 500E at my local Emporia...
... and to give Wendy due credit, she did exactly as I requested, which was to get hands on with the machine itself
To explain; I had previously, aeons ago, been given a demo of a Janome by a younger member of staff and sat there while she ran through a very scripted dialogue, demonstrating all the features ... all of which culminated in nada learned, no excitement generated and half an hour wasted!
This demo was very different;
Wendy talked me through the various functions, options and so on but I was in the driving seat ... my fat fingers were on the touch screen.
I loaded the hoop, choose designs, enlarged and reduced the size, flipped orientation etc.
I chose the embroidery colours, threaded the machine (the needle threader is some sort of Genie!) stop, started and cut the tail ends.
And after the embroidery was complete we looked at the Janomes' settings options.
The only thing we didn't cover was downloading outside sourced designs etc and only because Wendy herself doesn't know this step.... but she encouraged me to come back and talk to another member of staff who was getting to grips with these features and practices on another day ... and who knows I may well do that!
The hoop size was enormous ... almost too big, certainly for the piece we were working on, but smaller hoops that fitted the machine were available ( tho' I was slightly taken aback by the £69 cost !£!£!£!)
All in all I was extremely impressed ... the machine is beautiful, sewed like a dream and rectifying a shredded thread (which I'm sure was caused by my incorrect threading of the second colour) was surprisingly easy with stitch by stitch reversal to a point where the thread had started to shred....
The only con I could find from this experience is that it is one BIG Boy! and would not be a take out and play on the dining room table machine.
I think it would have to have its own permanent position and there is a large desk available upstairs in the sewing/embroidery/art/wardrobe/spare room upstairs ( if I can clear the area)?!
I came away with the design I had stitched and a big warm glow.... this (the design, not the glow) will be left casually around the Sweat shop where it just might catch Imself's eye!
Now when looking at machines or chatting on this thread i will at least have a basic understanding of the machine, what it does and what questions to ask