A Singer Featherweight if you only are sewing straight stitch. I find mine on craigslist. Some people look on eBay for them but you have to be careful that the seller knows how to shipping with enough of the right packing.

Singer FW weigh about 11 pounds and sew very straight stitches. Some come with a lot of attachments. It's almost like a toy but it is REAL machine!

I have 3 right now. Babylock Esante, Elna Quilter's Dream and Janome Jem. I have found a few Singers and Kenmores at thrift shops and so now my 3 sons all have a basic machine to hem pants with. My middle son, 28, made curtains for his apartment. Others have been passed on to beginning quilters who cannot afford a starter machine. It does feel good to find a usable machine for $20 or less and pass it on. I really have no desire for a Featherweight but I wish I had a treadle like my grandmother taught me on.

I have 5 machines. My Elna 7000 that I use all the time. An Elna surger that I never use. It has been balanced twice and still doesn't work right. My Mother-in-laws Kenmore. I use it mainly for buttonholes, Elna isn't good at that. A small Janome that I keep in the trailer for winter sewing. A Sailrite, my husband mainly uses it. I don't want him to ruin another good machine when he sews something heavy.

A 20 year old Kenmore
A 2 year Viking Sapphire
Brand new Janome Horizon 7700

Still doesn't seem like enough!

So how do you like the Horizon?

Love it! Believe it or not, I bought the Janome 6600 back in January, 2010 and loved it so much I had to look and see what the Horizon had to offer. Same great features and then some! So, I traded in my 6600 for the Horizon. The dealer gave me 100% of the money I paid for the 6600 toward the upgrade on the Horizon. I'll be keeping the Horizon for a long, long time. If you're thinking of upgrading, you won't be disappointed.

I have the Elna Pro Quilting Queen, which is supposed to be very similar to the Janome 6600, and I really like it, but that Horizon looks sweet, especially that throat! But I've only had the Queen about a year, and bought it at a liquidation sale, so can't justify a new machine...yet!

I have two featherweights
one embroidery
one quilting machine on a 14' frame
3-1928 singers
one red eye singer
one 1908 industrial singer with the original manual
one serger
one precision machine
and the second machine I bought 30 years ago

I have 6 machines - a babylock ellageo, babylock ellure,brother,janome for longarm quilting,another machine for heavy duty quilting - I am addicted can you tell

Y'all are so lucky. I am a snowbird so have only one in each place. One is an old (bought used) Babylock Ellageo. I have to have diskettes to get embroidery files to the machine, but I really love it. The other is a Brother, small sew/embroidery machine with only the small hoop. I sew on a "Cadillac" for part of the year, and then on a Hyundai for the rest of the year. I'm trying to talk DH into getting a quilting/sewing machine or an HQ16.