I have a Janome Magnolia 7330 and love it. Cost me $399 at the LQS and I got them to include the 1/4" foot and walking foot. They always include free maintenance for 2 (maybe 3?) years and free classes.

I love my machine. I've been sewing on it for 9 months now fairly heavily (I sew almost every night and have finished 7 quilts plus other sewing projects) and it's never had a problem. Great basic quilting machine for a good price :)

hi everyone,
I have 3 Janome's,two of those are the lil one's which weight only 11 pounds and I use all of them as I travel that's how good they are.Um I started out yrs.ago with a Singer hahaha that long ago and finally it quit so I upgraded.Jetta

i have the Janome 6600 and Janome platinum for travel and classes.

a couple great machines with no bells and whistles:
Janome 1600 and the Juki 98qt..both basic sewing machine, but industrial.
you can check out
www.patternreview.com
and check out different machines, with prices/pros and cons,written by users...

I have several machines but the ones i like to use are my mom's 1951 singer 403. it will sew through anything. it does FMQ, embroidrey, etc. i also just got a 221 for piecing and other things quilty. the others are fixin to be up for sale. love my two babies

I have several machines, but my favorite for quilting is a Viking Lilly. I also have a Pfaff (like the IDF), Viking 950E for embroidery, Featherweight for classes (great for piecing), and a Baby Lock Quilters Pro for my PCQuilter. DH says I am machine poor. Oh and I just sold a piece of junk Brother.

I Have a bernina, love it! and got a Juki 98Q..it's an awesome machine.....and has a beautiful stitch....

Be sure to check out the Berninas. I've had them for 20 years and would recommemd them to everyone. Do some research on what you want in a machine and sew on as many different
machines as possible. There will be one model that you will immediately feel comfortable with and know it is the right one.

I have a Brother QC1000 I absolutely love it. I am so spoiled now. Tried to sew on my old Kenmore stuff I didn't want to use my Brother for. Kept looking for the needle threader and thread cutter. LOL

I use a Janome 6500 and have been running it hard and nearly daily for 6 1/2 yrs. It does have some bells and whistles. What I like about it is extended space under the arm, knee lifter, automatic thread cutter and automatic threader. I also quilt on this machine but it sounds like you might not need that option.

The Janome was introduced to me by the Bernina dealer. I now own 4 Janomes. Some of my daughters sew on the other machines. I told her I wanted a machine with no tension issues. My background is a mechanical Pfaff.

When you said something simple the Juki with extended lenght under the arm and only straight stitch came to my mind. I have no personal experience with them though but I have heard good things.

Something else that came to mind was a vintage sewing machine Singer 301, Feather Weight (Singer) or a Bernina 830. I like the Singer 301 for piecing and Feather Weight.

I have 2 Bernina's a 330 as my travel machine and a 730E for everything else. The 3 series have several really nice machines. The 330 is the most basic. This series is replacing the Activa series, so you might be able to get a good deal at a dealers for one of those. Also the older Berninas are still much sought after and could probably be gotten for a good price. I also have a little Brother CS4000 which my DH got for me verrrrrry reasonably, refurbished on Overstock.com and it is a great little machine. However, if you are going to do machine quilting, you will want more throat space, so check out the other great priced machines on Overstock.com. The refurbished ones even come with a warranty. I won a Janome Jem silver ed I was not pleased with it so traded for the Bernina 330, but there are other basic Janomes that I am sure would be great for your purposes. Good luck and happy hunting.