If you have one of these machines....
 

Please help.

I know that a sewing machine is personal and there will be many different answers to this question:

If you had the opportunity to have one of the following, which would it be? Why?

1. Brother DreamWeaver (sewing and quilting)
2. baby lock Crescendo ('' '' )
3. Janome Horizon Memory Craft 8900 (sewing and quilting)

I have looked all three and like them all. I also looked at the Bernina but have eliminated this for my own reasons although I know it's a good machine.
I like the features of all; the Janome has a 9mm stitch width vs. 7mm on the others. The Brother and baby lock (made by the "same" company?) have a sideways stitch which would have saved me zillions of time on my last queen sized quilt. Are the baby locks and brothers comparable in life/service to the owner/etc?

My focus will be on art quilts of all kinds (I want to experiment) and baby things (quilts, hooded towels, etc.) and just having fun.

I will be selling my baby lock dream series quest as a condition to my husband for the new one.

If you have one of these, could you please give me your opinion of it. Is it reliable? Are you a fast, quick, hard quilter or nice and slow? Do you use the features on the machine? Anything else?

I will mention that I don't like to get to know all the little idiosyncrasies of a machine and have to fiddle with all the million little things that can get in the way of just 'getting to work." I just want to load the thread, put in the bobbin, set the stitch and go to it!

Thanks for any comments.

None I would buy the Husqvarna Viking Ruby Deluxe or if money no problem I would buy the Husqvarna Viking Diamond Deluxe.

I love my dreamweaver no complaints here. Very solid machine. Sews everything easily. The muvit foot is awesome. It or the crescendo would be my choice. 9mm machines tend to eat the fabric more which is the main complaint i have seen with this width style stitching. If i was going to go janome i would look for 7mm comparable machine

I really like my Janome...it's versatile. I use it for piecing,machine appliqué,quilting,the whole nine yards. I just poke a few buttons,and it's ready. I sew about 6 hours a day,since I retired in. April,and it just sings along.

Crescendo hands down. My friend recently got a 8900 and has lots of problems. Be sure you buy from a nearby good dealer

I am a Bernina girl for life and would not give any other machine a second glance. However, I have purchased 3 different lower end Brothers for my daughters as starter machines, so I guess if I could not buy a Bernina it would probably be a Brother.

I love my 8900 and have had no problems. It just purrs right along. Janome is tops in my book :)

I love my Crescendo and haven't had any trouble with my Babylocks. I love the laser and the sensor pen is pretty cool.

My first choice would be the Brother.

I have 3 Brother machines now. A 4th died an untimely death while we were vacationing. It fell on it's head when my DH packed the car and it suffered fatal injuries. It cost me $89 when I bought it 6 years earlier. I'm not gentle with my sewing machines; it stood my abuse for 6 years and still worked great.

One of my Brothers is a low end mechanical that I will use for traveling. It works great, has a nice stitch. One is the SE350, with a 4" embroidery attachment. Someday I might work up the courage to try embroidery. The latest one is a sewing and quilting machine that has a larger throat for quilting. It's not much larger, but I plan to use it for doll quilts, so it's fine. I really like how all of them work.

Brother manuals are excellent. When I worked, I wrote requirements for systems and often had to also write user manuals. I have a HQ16; the manual is, to be kind, brief; I really expected much more from a machine that I paid thousands of dollar to get. The Brother manuals are a cut above; easy to read, good examples, lots of pictures and they also include a lot of basic sewing information. My only complaint is that the print is small, but I'll gladly suffer through that for the info in the manuals.

Janome - the other day I came across a thread on QB about the Janome and bobbin problems. Suggest you find it and read through it. The thread surprised me; none of the other threads I'd read about picking a sewing machine ever had a negative thing to say about Janome.

Look for on the internet for user forums on all three of the machines. That will give you a better idea of the true performance of each of the machines.

The Brother Dreamweaver and the Baby Lock Crescendo are virtually the same machine, clones, as it were. I researched them both very well before I bought my Dreamweaver. I have been a Baby Lock girl for years, since I bought my first serger back in the 80s, and was pretty much sold on the Crescendo. The main reason I wound up with the Brother is because of the service I received from my local dealer. That and they offered me a better price. I would recommend either one. I cannot say anything about that particular Janome model because I am not familiar with it.