Originally Posted by
sef0181
Good afternoon!
Today my mother surprised me with an offer to purchase me a new machine for my birthday next month. Right now I'm piecing and machine quilting on a $100 ancient Brother. I think I would enjoy Free Motion Quilting, but the thought of being able to edge to edge quilt with an embroidery machine is awfully appealing as well (in theory). I tried Free Motion on my ancient Brother (it technically can do it), but became overwhelmingly frustrated at constant thread tension issues, which is why I'm drawn to the idea of using embroidery machines to 'cheat' and get perfect beautiful designs. I've also been toying with the ideas of using the 'fancy' stitches (embroidery stitches?) that are available on most models to machine quilt something interesting in the background, but I'm not sure that it would look very nice.
I have a tiny house and a neat freak husband, so I'm constantly unpacking and repacking my sewing stuff onto the kitchen table, so portability is a must at this stage.
Anyway, enough rambling, I'm curious what your recommendations are for machines I should put on my wish list. Thanks everyone!
Check out The Crafty Gemini. She did a series of embroidery classes online and had machine recommendations that were not expensive. I think they were Brother. She is great and has good ideas. That being said I love my Bernina with the embroidery module!!!!