The Best Hat Embroidery Machines List, Comparison, And Guide

As exciting as hat embroidery is, it's also pretty darn expensive.

Many companies produce these machines, but they're not created equal. Some are imperfect machines that just don't cut it.

You need to avoid those useless machines and invest your money wisely so that you can enjoy the pure pleasure of embroidery. More on this later!

You'll want a hat embroidering machine that:

• is easy to learn 
• doesn't cost too much
• has a display screen so you can see your designs
• is easy to switch between flat hoops and hat hoops

But, no matter what machine you get, you are bound to face challenges. After all, it's never going to be as simple as embroidering on flats.

There's a lot of stuff going on - correct hopping and adjusting the design to fit on the brim of the cap. But, with a little practice, you can enjoy the experience and make a profit along the way.

In this post, you'll find recommendations for some of the best embroidery machines for hats. Two machines to avoid.

You'll also learn what to look for while shopping for the hat machines and get answers to common questions about hat embroidery. 

Rather than keep you in suspense, I'll tell you upfront that my Number One Pick is the Brother SE1900. Click here to check it out right now at Amazon.

I know you can't wait to embroider your caps. So without further ado, let's jump right into it.

Comparison Table: Best Hat Embroidery Machines

Here's a quick rundown of all of the machines. Further down the page, you'll find more in-depth information about each model.

Click here to check the current price of the Brother SE600 at Amazon. It's the best for absolute beginners with limited budgets.

Whether you're a professional or a beginner, don't invest in the Janome MB-4S and Janome MB-4N. Don't listen to the people who are saying you could take your hat embroidery to the next level with these machines.

These are expensive, and both these machines have mixed reviews. 

I don't want you to take the risk of investing in the machines that have so many negative reviews.

Although I don't really recommend them, you might want to check out the reviews and the current price.

Check the availability of the Janome MB-4S via Amazon.

If you have the budget and want to take your embroidery game to the next level, then Juki Taima Sai 8 is your best bet. (via sewingmachinesplus.com)

Features to Look for in a Top Hat Embroidery Machine: Guide

1. Reputable Company

It’s important to find a company that has been in the business for a while. And that specializes in embroidery machines designed to sew on hats.

The industry leaders are Barudan and Tajima. Singer, Brother, and Janome are good too.

If you are a lucky professional who can spend thousands of dollars, and you have lots of space, then your best bets are either Barudan or Tajima. 

Both Barudan and Tajima machines are not readily available on the internet. You should not buy these online. You are better off attending trade shows and trying them first hand before investing such a significant amount of money.

I want you to start small and buy a machine that’s not too heavy on your pocket. Later if you find it's for you and have some profits, you can upgrade to the big beasts like Barudan machines.

2. Easy to Set Up

You want a machine that you can set up by yourself. Also, you want to be able to switch out threads easily.

And, finally, look for one that makes it easy to put the hat into the hoop. That will probably take some practice.

3. Ability to Import Designs Easily

If you’re going to be personalizing hats, you'll want to be able to create your own designs. 

Some machines can be hooked up directly to your computer, and others allow importing of designs via a USB port.

4. Number of Needles

Professional hat embroidery machines have over ten needles. Fifteen is not uncommon these days. Manufacturers want to be able to set up the cap with the design and walk away to set up the next machine.

The home sewist only needs one. However, that will mean that you need to stick around and change colors while the embroidery machine is stitching.

Down below, I’ll recommend a four-needle machine that will save you time if you’re going to do a lot of hat embroidery.

5. Good Documentation and Training

Hardly anything is more disappointing than having difficulties setting up and using your new toy. Oh, sorry. I meant your new cap embroidery machine.

It helps if there are videos to demonstrate how to use the machine and ways to contact the company and ask questions.

But one big key is to give yourself time to play and learn how to balance thread, tension, and the hat material. And you’ll want to get comfortable hooping up the hat. Then you’ll want to learn how to plan for the center of the design.

Good machines can show you the edge corners of the design before it starts. This allows you to see if you need to adjust where the cap is in the hoop or shrink the edges on the user interface.

6. Ability to change from hat hoop to flat hoop.

If you like embroidering on flats as well hats, then it's a big time-saver to have a machine that gives you the ability to change from flat hoop to hat hoop quickly.

Best Machines for Hat Embroidery

My research has found that these machines are going to be the best for you because they provide the best quality at a good price point. They’re also all easy to learn and use.

And all of them have a cap hoop included, or it’s easy to buy one.

Without further ado, here's the list of top hat embroidery machines for you.

1. Brother PE800: Best for Beginners

It's a bit more pricey than PE770, but it's worth it. You'll be getting the latest technology with the color screen, and there are significant improvements over the previous model.

I can't stress enough how valuable the color screen is.

The 3.2" sew smart touch screen allows you to view and change the color of individual threads right on the screen.

So you'll know how the embroidery will turn out before even stitching. Yay!

You'll need to buy the cap/hat hoop to use it for hat embroidery.

Click here to view the Brother PE800 from sewingmachinesplus.com.

Check price at Amazon.

2. Brother SE600: Best Budget Cap Embroidery Machine

You get ten more built-in embroidery stitches, and 36 additional sewing stitches, and six extra lettering fonts as compared to SE400.

With 80 embroidery designs and 103 sewing stitches in total, you can do so much more. You can import your own .pes file designs as well.

Work on a 4x4 inch embroidery field with the included 4x4 embroidery hoop. You don't even have to purchase the cap hoop with SE600.

Features specific to embroidery are automatic feed thread cutting, speed adjustment, and curved text on-screen editing. Besides all this, there are dozens of sewing-specific features in the SE600 too.

You’ll never run out of things you can do, whether embroidering hats or doing traditional sewing projects.

If you are working with many colors, you will have to rethread it every time to change the thread color. You'll have this problem with all the single needle machines.

You can read the full review of SE600 at this link. 

Brother SE600 from Amazon.

There are 240 built-in sewing stitches with ten buttonhole styles to allow you to construct and create what you see in your dreams.

You get 138 built-in embroidery designs with 11 lettering fonts.

Not enough for you? You can also import additional designs through a USB port.

You can use a sideways sewing feature for applique. (Applique is stitching or embroidering around the edges of a piece of fabric that you place on top of your project.)

You can even design your own decorative sewing stitches with the "My Custom Stitch" feature! 

Click here to check the current price of the Brother SE1900 at Amazon

Another big plus is that you’ll be able to get creating as soon as you unpack your machine. You won’t have to run to the store to buy anything except for fabric and stabilizer.

4. Brother PE550D Embroidery Machine - For the Disney Lover

This is in addition to the 80 other more standard designs that are included like decorative alphabets and borders, floral patterns, designs, especially for children and for holidays.

Use them all in a 4-inch by 4-inch embroidery field that is enough for basic embroidery. You get a 4x4 hoop in the package.

You can further embellish your work with the nine fonts (three are Japanese) when doing monogramming and other personalization. Adjust the fonts as needed by selecting capital letters, lower case, numbers, and common symbols.

You get each font in three sizes-small, medium, and large. You can align text at an angle or in curves, create multiple lines of text, change the spacing between letters, and more.

Another massive benefit of the PE550D is the “Sew Smart” LCD color touch screen. It measures 3.2 inches across and 1.8 inches vertically. You can preview your designs in the original colors or change them to alternate colors before doing the actual stitching.

With built-in memory and a USB port, you have virtually unlimited space for adding more designs.

At iBroidery.com, you can get thousands of designs that include more Disney patterns as well as Marvel Comics designs that are exclusively for Brother customers. (Note that a USB, if you need one, is not included.)

And I haven’t even mentioned your own designs yet! Anything you create and save as a .pes file, you can upload it to this machine.

Use the grid sheet and alignment tools to set your design and needle in just the right position, so you get your creation in the perfect place on your fabric.

Save time and trouble with the automatic needle threader! This is particularly useful for embroidery designs that use multiple thread colors. Related to this, you can stop the needle in both up and down positions.

If you need help using the PE550D, you can access the built-in tutorials. (I haven’t had the opportunity to watch these, so I can’t comment on them further here.)

The machine itself weighs just under 15 pounds and measures 16.5 by 12.08 by 7.76 inches. That’s small and light enough for just about anyone to carry around easily.

Finally, you also get a dust cover for the machine and a manual printed in both English and Spanish.

The PE550D is backed by a 25-year limited warranty along that includes free customer phone service and online technical support for the life of the machine.

Check the price and availability of the Brother PE550D at Amazon.

5. Juki Tajima Sai Machine- Best for professionals with deep pockets

If you really want to ramp up your embroidery production into a full-time business, you might consider an industrial-strength machine like the Juki Sai.

Since this machine has eight needles, you can create multi-color designs with just a few thread changes, depending on the complexity of the pattern, of course.

When it comes to speed, the Juki Sai by Tajima is certainly no slouch. It runs at 800 stitches per minute and can maintain this rate through various stitch lengths.

You can speed up production by using the double set of frames that are included. While the machine is working, you can prepare another set for future use.

If you have a Windows computer, you can use the Tajima Writer Plus software for creating designs from a selection of templates. Owners of this machine can download this software, and it's tutorials from the exclusive users only site.

You can transmit data between your computer and machine with the help of a LAN port on the SAI.

On the Juki Sai, you work in a brightly-lit (LED bulbs) 12-inch by 8-inch space. That’s big and bright enough to handle any home project you’d care to tackle.

Important machine features include

• A laser positioning system for getting started in the right place and making tracing simple, 
• Auto thread trimming when making jumps and changing thread colors,
• A thread detection system that tells you if threads break by simply stopping the needles, and more.

You’ll appreciate the slim cylinder free arm. This feature is also useful for small objects like socks, gloves, and pockets.

The Juki Sai is no lightweight. It weighs 82 pounds and measures 22 by 26 by 23 inches. I wouldn’t expect that you’d carry this to a friend’s house for a day of collaborative embroidering.

Click here to check the current price of Juki Tajima at sewingmachinesplus.com.

6. Don't Buy the Janome MB-4S: Not Recommended

Because it's compatible with six industry standard hoop sizes, you get a lot of flexibility with the design size. The hat hoop size is standard.

But if you’re embroidering multiple designs on the cap, you will still need to plan out the center points and reposition the hat in the hoop.

There are 50 fonts. The good news is you can connect it directly to your computer using the USB port.

And you can create designs with the Janome software. It has a special interface that’s a full-color remote computer screen.

It stitches at a fast 800 stitches per minute. There are ten monogramming designs with both two and three letters.

Some would say it's a professional cap embroidery machine and gets you professional quality results. It allows you to store up to 1.5 million stitches in the memory (or 100 designs).

This baseball cap embroidery machine is sturdy and can embroider at a faster speed than the Brother embroidery machines when you have a complicated design.

Although this embroidery only machine is packed with features and uses four needles instead of one, remember it has many negative reviews as well. If I were you, I would not be willing to invest in it.

In fact, you can download any compatible design from the internet and import those digitized designs from your computer to the SE400. 

The SE400 is useful for beginners. It's also good if you aren't sure if you will stick with your hobby of cap embroidery for a long time. You always have the option to resell it when you have outgrown your machine.

But before you buy this budget machine, you should know about its limitations.

This is only a 4x4 embroidery machine. That means you'll have to look for smaller designs that fit in the space. Or you may have to split the designs using the software and rehoop it. But that is not an easy thing to do. 

I would strongly recommend purchasing a cap hoop for it.

Although you can do embroidery on hats without it, spending a few dollars would save you from the hassle of sticking the hat on the stabilizer and holding on to it firmly while embroidering on it.

 Check the availability of Brother SE600 via Amazon.(New model of SE400)

Hat Embroidery Machine FAQs

1. Do you need to use special needles for hat machine embroidery?

Yes, you should use special needles for machine embroidery. 

They were designed for use with polyester and rayon embroidery threads on a variety of fabrics.

The 75/11 needle is used most often. The 75 is the European needle size, and the 11 is the American needle size. 

For hat machine embroidery, you may want to use a larger needle since hats are usually made from thicker material. Also, you might like using a thicker wool thread to make your design pop out.

So, look for a sharp needle in the range of 75/11 to 90/14.

2. Do you need to use a special thread for hat machine embroidery?

It’s possible.

You probably want a thicker thread since you’ll probably be making a dense design on heavier fabric for your hat.

When I say heavier fabric, I don’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be a heavy canvas or denim. The hat could be made from medium cotton. But I doubt it’s going to be made from a lightweight satin or linen.

You’ll want to run a test. It’s a balance with the material of the hat, the thread, and the design.

3. What’s the most common machine embroidery thread for hats?

Rayon thread is the most popular choice because it looks good on the majority of hats. And it can hold up well without breaking or fraying during the stitching.

It generally comes in two weights: 40 and 30.

You will need to use special bobbin thread in the weight to match the machine thread weight and thickness of the material.

Pro Tip

If you have made this far, here is the quick tip for you. Tuck this away for when you get your embroidery unit. Unlike sewing, you want the tension to be unbalanced.

You should have the bobbin tension a bit tighter than the needle thread. That ensures that the bobbin thread stays on the bottom and doesn’t pull up to the surface.

Too tight tension can cause “bird nesting” where there’s a pile of looped threads forming under the fabric.

If that happens, ensure the thread hasn’t slipped out of the take-up lever guide, clean the tension disks of any lint, and ensure the bobbin area has been cleaned up. Then you can start again.

Verdict: Which Top Hat Embroidery Machine to Choose?

So, if you’re just starting out, I'd suggest the Brother PE800 (via Amazon.) It’s easy to start practicing embroidery right away. Then you can add in caps once you’re comfortable with the tension and speed.

It's also the best embroidery machines for hats if you’re not interested in sewing, or you already own a sewing machine.

If you're on a budget and a basic cap embroidery machine is all you want, then Brother SE600 is a good choice to make via Amazon. You can also sew with the SE600 since it's a combo machine.  

If you are interested in sewing and adding designs, then get the Brother SE1900. You can create a design on your hat that matches your outfit. And yes, that goes for guys as well!

Click here to see our #1 pick the Brother SE1900 from Amazon.

If you're committed to doing a lot of hat embroidery, then you will want to invest in the Barudan or Tajima. 

Get the Juki Taima Sai 8 (via sewingmachinesplus.com). It's only for the professional that doesn't mind spending thousands of dollars on getting the top of the line device. 

Are you still looking for more embroidery machines? Here is our Brother DZ820E review. You can also read our comparison between Brother PE770 and Brother DZ820E embroidery machine.