The Brother PQ1500S quilting and sewing machine is one of the most affordable models on the market for serious quilters who need a way to power through lots of piecing work. While it provides a commercial level of performance, it's still portable, great for free motion work and can handle some basic regular sewing work, too.
Stitch Count
Quilt Sets King
This is easy - there's only one stitch with this machine. That's why this is called a straight stitch machine. It doesn't sew anything fancy but it wasn't built for fancy - it's built for speed.
The maximum stitch length of the straight stitch is 7mm. You can perform even basic basting with this long of a stitch setting.
Brother PQ1500S Presser Feet
The Brother PQ1500S comes with 8 screw-in style presser feet and the notions include a screwdriver you can use to remove and reattach the feet. The set includes a General Purpose Foot, a Rolled Hem Foot, a Zipper Foot, an Invisible Zipper Foot, a 1/4" Foot, a Quilting Foot, Walking Foot, and a Pin Feed Foot.
Brother PQ1500S Features Functionality
If you've ever made a quilt of any real size, you've had to deal with issues that face any hobby quilter. You have lots of pieces of fabric to attach together - time consuming work that requires lots of straight stitching and can consume great quantities of thread. You've had to work with different kinds of materials and put them together in order to add contrast and texture to your quilt. You've had to manage fitting a large roll of heavy material through the throat or "harp" of the machine (that area between the needle and the right side of the machine).
Industrial quilting machines are designed specifically to deal with large, bulk fabrics but can be way too much machine for most households.
The Brother PQ1500S fills the gap by being large enough to handle even King size quilts and yet still light enough to move around. As an industrial setup can cost a couple of thousand dollars (or more), the PQ1500S becomes an attractive choice as it's not much more than the cost of some entry level sewing machines.
Besides the high speed sewing, it comes with an oversized extension table, an automatic needle threader, removable knee lifter, an oversized harp area, a telescoping thread stand, a front-loading bobbin and heavy duty metal construction.
Extra features for improved fabric control include the pin feed mechanism which allows the machine to feed fabrics with a plush nap without marring the fabric itself and retractable feed dogs with four different height settings for fine tuned precision. That the Brother PQ1500S provides this level of control at such a great price is one of the reasons it's so attractive to quilters.