Originally Posted by ckcowl
you can pick up nice Brother machines for $89-$159 that are good beginner/basic machines- have a variety of stitches-can do button holes- are easy to use.
when we had the sewing school we had 5 of them and all of our students loved them- they took quite a beating too- daily use by many different people- aged 4-85...
We got our 9-year-old a starter model Brother for Christmas. Hasn't gotten tons of use yet, but it's worked great so far, and has some different stitch options. Also got our adult son the Project Runway version of the Brother a few years ago- again, hasn't gotten tons of use, but seems like a decent machine. Can't hurt to start out with something basic and inexpensive to begin with, then upgrade later if they want to go further with it.