Your Aunt Gracie quilt is beautiful, GloJean!
For our sewing machine hunt, we focused on a local dealer with an excellent reputation that had serviced my old machine, and they are a convenient distance away and very nice to work with. They carried Baby Locks and a few Jukis. Doing on-line research, I thought I'd found the machine of my dreams (the mechanical Juki TL 2010Q straight stitch machine, which everyone raves about), and we went to try it, thinking we'd come home with one. But I couldn't get the lower, side facing bobbin in to save my life, because of my arthritic fingers that don't work that well.
That was such a disappointment, but the associate showed us the Baby Lock Jazz, which is also mechanical, but had a drop-in bobbin. I did some research and it wasn't encouraging: Not that many reviews, and as many negative as positive. I decided to get it anyway, because it fit the bill, although I was very uneasy because of the negative reviews (it doesn't have a needle up/down feature, which was a big complaint). I didn't get beyond trying the presser foot; it made a very loud buzzing sound when the pedal was depressed, and the buzz continued during stitching, so we took it back. I definitely didn't want such a loud machine.
We ended up with the Baby Lock Soprano, which is their top machine in the tier below what the associate called the 'Hallelujah' machines (she said when you sit down at those an angelic choir sings the Hallelujah chorus, LOL), which were out of our price range. Now I just have to learn to use it!