This post came just when I was getting the itch for a new one lol, I have a 29 year old kenmore , she has been a good one and still going strong, really all I do is straight sticth and the occasional zigzag.

My mom bought a Brother sewing machine in 1963 which I now use. It is heavy, made of metal and has no bells or whistles, does forward, backward and zigzag. Marvelous machine and as long as it keeps on keeping on I will continue to use it. I would probably say I use 100% of this machines options, which is easy considering there is not a large selection to choose from. LOL

Well, I only use 5% of my brain 100% of the time.

I think I'm doing really well with the 20% on the sewing machine.

Mostly I use my fancy Viking Sapphire 875 for quilting and sometimes garments. I have quilted baby quilts using the fancy stitches with a walking foot. Otherwise its mostly straight stitches. I use my straight stitch only machines for piecing my quilts, mostly just my treadles.

I use a lot of my decorative stitches... so maybe I use 50% of my machine 100% of the time :D:D:D

I made a couple of baby quilts just so I could use every decorative stitch on my machine. I'll try to find photos of it and post in the pictures section in a minute. Basically I put together fabric pieces in the same color family then quilted using a different decorative stitch for each seam.

I'm probably in the 10% range 9% of the time but I am doing a quilt for a little girl for Christmas right now and have used the embroidery letters to put her name on the side and hearts on the top along with a swirl stitch so on this one I actually used a couple of the other stitches my Janome 6500 has. I only have used 3 of the feet that came with it including the walking foot so maybe when I find the book I will have to see what some of the other feet do.

I found the photos and posted them in the pictures section if anyone is interested. It's titled "Using your machine's decorative stitches."

I use mainly straight stitch and zig zag, but have used many of the special stitches my Brother machine HS2000 has to offer. I love it!! Sometimes I add fancy stitching to frames in a baby panel quilt and they're great for other projects too!

I made a Crazy Quilt Tree Skirt for DS & DIL. Used just about every stitch on my Janome 6600P. Used the little * stitch as a tacking stitch all over instead of quilting the whole thing. Bought the circle attachment & use it for labels. Program in the information and spin it.