Embroidery machines aren't that expensive though. I bought my grandmother one for ~$500 in the mid 2000s, which was on the high end of consumer machines but I could get docs out of the manufacturer and give her a program that didn't suck at turning photos into patterns along with it, and the software the shipped with the things all sucked at doing that if they tried at all. She would have made enough throw pillows with cats, birds, long-demolished buildings and relatives on them to smother the world if she didn't keep running out of stuffing. She definitely got more than $500 and a week of hacking worth of use out of it. Bet you could assemble a collection of devices that could do most of the things that thing can for less than $12,000. I say "most" only because I kind of doubt the market is flooded with bedazzling machines. Also I have just admitted to more knowledge of embroidery than I ever intended to admit to publicly.
We were evaluating whether to get my wife's '75 Elna Super SU rebuilt (the buttonhole cam blew) or buy something new. This was when I discovered that the only Swiss left in the business were Bernina, they only had one mechanical, that mechanical wasn't as feature-rich as the Super SU and holy shit the high end on sewing machines had gone batshit. You're right - embroiderers aren't expensive. Really, they're a bunch of stepper motors and an ASIC controller. But we're talkin' the cadillac envy machine of all sewing machines and it still costs less than the coffeepisser once you add in, you know, a water heater.