Since my mom won't give up her featherweight DH bought me a Janome Jem for my birthday last year. What I love about it...is it's weight, my quarter inch foot from my big janome fits the little one and it has a table that fits around it for a bigger surface.

Word of caution... *I did this and ended up in trouble because the 1/4" was not the same on both machines. Lots of frustration.

I would highly recommend that IF you begin a project at class that you continue it on the machine on which you started to avoid problems.

You can always change the needle position. My 6500 Janome has so many needle positions I can line it up to the 720.

I have Janome 3160QDC that I take to classes, light weight, thread cutter, needle down, extension table everything a full size machine has. I Love mine

I love my Janome Gem and it has needle down. I really like that you also don't need a pedal because it has a button to start and stop as well as a foot pedal and variable speeds.

I have the janome Jem and love it!

I'm lucky in that my main machine is a Pfaff and I found a second hand (pre-loved) one from an ad in the local paper, so I take the older one to classes (and it's excellent).

The Brother CS6000i gets great reviews, from me too, and it's an amazingly lightweight machine that always does what it should. It's available from Amazon for a good price usually. If you search for it on this site or pattern review, you'll see how popular it is :)

I just bought this machine from Newegg.com. I gotva great price....bettervthan Amazon. My "good" machine is a brother also. Very easy to use

I have an Elna 6300 dream quilter machine, light enough to take to classes.Have used it for many years still going strong.