BROTHER JV1400 Sewing Machine Review [2021]

The advertised picture from Brother's site.

After hand sewing for years, I've been CRAVING for a sewing machine since I was a kid, and I thought this shall be a place to start. This is a super cheap portable machine, I bought it for around 1.4M IDR which rounds up to about 97 USD. Awesome, right?

The basics of the machine.

There's also a removable thingy to sew armholes, etc.

If you buy a new one, make sure there's a Brother seal tape on the box to ensure it hasn't been tampered with.

It came with instructions (setting up the machine, tools, etc), and a bag with 2 extra foot, 4 bobbins, and a pack of needles. One is a zipper foot, the other is a buttonhole foot.

Right of the bat, obviously it's not gonna be industrial standard. It has limited stitch options, but for the price it is very worth it.

There's also an LED light when you turn on the ON/OFF switch. Some people criticized this because the tutorial said to turn it off when you're inserting the thread, which defies the purpose of having a light in the first place. I simply just keep it on, as long as you don't hit the pedal you won't hurt your hand.

It uses a pedal, which I think is one of the major downsides of this machine. It doesn't have a controller for the speed, so you better have a good foot control lol. Otherwise it'll just be a mess, the reason why is you NEVER want to sew at high speed. Especially not for beginners. It crinkles up the fabric, it's prone to all kinds of mistakes... just, a mess.

But yeah, it took me a while for me to get used to.

I got really cocky when sewing my FIRST EVER sewing machine project. "Surely it's not THAT hard, right? I'm good at sewing," or so I thought.

Needless to say, it ended up with me wasting my good linen fabric, A HOT MESS.

Here are some examples of the stitches, using my wasted linen fabric :"