I bought my grandaughter a $39.99 Janome on sale at Hancock's. That thing is amazing! It has variable stitches and goes and goes! She loves it and if anything happens to it, not much money out. She made a purse and wallet the first day she had it! GG

$40? Wow!!!

I recently upgraded to a "good" machine and it has made all the difference in the world with my machine quilting. (My new one is a Bernina- it was expensive for me- about $2000, so it took a long time for me to have the money to buy it.)

I WISH I had bought this machine 5 years ago. I know they do financing and I wish I had done that. I can't tell you how many headaches I would have saved myself. I had a machine from Sears- about $250- and it broke within 6months and I would have had to pay for shipping and parts to fix it. They would have covered only the labor because I didn't buy the extended warranty. I ended up "borrowing" a different Sears machine from a non-sewing friend whose husband gave it to her and she had never used it. It worked pretty well, but I wore it out in about 4 years. It just stopped working. I took it to an independent repairman and he said that I got as much out of it as I was going to. Not worth fixing. So I bought the person a new one and returned that.

Then, since I had no machine, my sister let me borrow her extra one that she got at Walmart last year during the Black Friday sales. It was way better than the Sears one, in my opinion! It had needle up/needle down, sewed a fairly nice stitch and get this- she only paid $40 (or maybe she said $50) for it!!!! Maybe since you have time you could check out what they are doing this year. They usually have a machine of some kind for Black Friday. And some of the couponing websites get the lists of Black Friday loot ahead of time.

If I had it to do over again, though, I would buy the good machine in the first place and just finance it if I had to. I do have a vintage machine that I use regularly- an old Brother from the 50's. I got the machine for free and paid about $100 to get it cleaned and rewired. This is what I was using in the months before I got the Bernie and for the money, it really was the best investment. All metal parts, goes through anything, NEVER breaks. However, things like needle up/down and needle threaders are invaluable, and I really missed those. Hope this helps some.

Good point about repair service. If you decide on a Kenmore, Sears does do rtheir own epair/tune-up service.

reply to sew cornie - Sears DOES NOT repair their sewing machines at their local stores that sell them. you can take it to Sears if it breaks and they will send it off for you to their repair center (wherever that is) and if you're lucky you'll get it back in a few months.