I was asked this week to make a quilt for my best friend's niece, who is due to be born Thanksgiving. Well I have enough materials to make a car seat quilt like I made for my boyfriend's nephew, ironically out of the same fabric line. I fear that I don't have enough matching for the additional items she's asked me to make last night. I recently got this book, Adorable Animal Applique (
http://www.anniescatalog.com/detail.html?prod_id=100528), and she's asked me to make a lot of the safari items in the book. This means shopping! I haven't even started looking yet. You all know by now that's dangerous for me.
I spent yesterday looking for a new sewing machine. Mine has started skipping stitches, and the trip to the doctor didn't help it. It'll be 22 years old this winter, so it's done its duty. I think I've narrowed it down to 2 machines:
Singer 9960 Quantum Stylist (
http://www.amazon.com/SINGER-9960-Qu...dp/B004RDH7Y8/)
Brother SE400 (
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-SE400-...dp/B003AVMZA4/)
They both have their benefits, and part of me wants the ability to do small embroidery projects without having to rely on my boyfriend's best friend's wife. Of course, because she has an embroidery machine, he says I don't need one. However, because it does embroidery, you only get 23 actual decorative stitches, which I actually use when I make placemats and mug rugs. The Singer has 600 stitches, but over half of them are the 5 fonts for the monogramming function and 13 are automatic buttonholes, which I won't use enough to say so. Neither have a large throat though. I don't want a $1000 machine, and haven't found one that they give the price for online below that price that I like. Our local "sewing center" (we don't have a LQS) sells machines, and anytime you go in there for anything (including the time I went in there for some buttons to match something I already had), they try to sell you a machine, which drives me nuts. I only go in there for them to work on my machine or something specific. They specialize in embroidery machines, machine repair, and machine consumables (needles, bulbs, etc.), so they don't have much in the way of quilting supplies & fabrics. Anyway, that's where I'm at, leaning toward the Singer unless something else catches my eye.