Originally Posted by McGargantuette

SLbram17, I’m considering keeping the Janome 7318 just as you suggest. Up until now, I’ve never really needed a sewing machine at all for day-to-day living, and would just take a garment to a tailor for alterations and hand-sew the occasional hem. But now that I have the Janome, and especially since it has zigzag and stretch stitches, I may just keep it around. Alternatively I could try to sell it on Craigslist, but I doubt I’d be able to sell it for much --- I just don’t think many folks are looking for home sewing machines these days.

And Onebyone, I know what you mean. I bought my Janome from Amazon, and now the Juki. I feel very very ambivalent about it though. On one hand, Amazon offered great savings to me, enough to offset my qualms about spending so much $$ (to me, at least) on a new hobby. But I really really hate myself for not patronizing a LQS. But with kids in college and a mortgage to pay, I just can’t justify spending the extra hundreds of dollars to buy the machine locally. (Plus there really isn’t a good local Juki dealer for me.) Quilting is a specialty hobby, and there aren’t many LQSs out there. Buying through Amazon decreases the LQS’s customer base, especially since Amazon is apparently able to offer such significant machine savings over the LQSs, which have to pay for store rentals, employees, and overhead to keep their doors open. Obviously, Amazon may run many LQS/dealers out of business (just like Barnes & Noble and Amazon did to our local book shops). The best I can do right now is to buy accessories and fabrics locally (or from other, smaller online sellers).