Review on 🧵 Brother ST371HD Sewing Machine: Strong & Tough with 37 Built-in Stitches, Free Arm Option, and 6 Included Feet! by Denise Davis

I've had the car for 6 months and have been working on 3 projects on it. I give it a "2" because it cuts through thick layers of fabric better than other machines I've had, but that's only if you have a continuous length of fabric that you're sewing. If you have small creases in double fold fabric (I have made Covid-19 masks from 4 layers of lightweight double fold fabric) these areas are difficult to sew - I had to raise the presser foot to allow the machine to move over these areas. sections. Feed pawls are very sluggish on anything heavier than medium weight fabric. My most recent project was a mock roman shade with several layers of medium weight curtain fabric plus a heavy backing and I had to constantly feed the fabric by hand. - I have to lift the sewing foot and use the tweezers to pull out the piece of thread. BUT THE BIGGEST PROBLEM is a design flaw. I've uploaded 2 photos, in one you can see where the 2 pieces of metal that make up the needle bar thread guide are not where they should be - the piece of metal on the back is too light to stay. in place and moved down so there was a gap between the two pieces of metal, which caused me to rethread the needle several times. I was able to use the tweezers to put the metal piece back in place, but as you can hopefully see in the other photo, the light gray thread still won't stay in the needle bar thread guide. This happens about every 30 seconds so I have to reattach the thread but it doesn't stay there and I have to reattach it over and over again. I called Brother customer service about this design flaw and they recommended that I take the machine 36 miles out of state via 2 toll bridges to an authorized service center to have it checked. This is a good suggestion as it's still under warranty and parts and labor are covered, but technically there's nothing 'wrong' with the needle bar thread guide, now that I've put the piece of metal back on it's just cheaply made with flimsy metal and therefore defective. Will they replace the thin metal inside with thicker metal just for me when everyone else gets lousy cheap metal? I do not think so. Too bad I didn't search more thoroughly for reviews on this car. Most reviews seemed to be positive. Maybe from people who use their car once for a project and then put it on the shelf for a few years until the next project? I have to say that I regret ever buying this car.