I see that there are a lot of opinions about the 'new' featherweight, some good some not so good. I first saw them at the Madison Quilt Extravaganza a couple of years ago and I was not impressed. The Singer company is not the same as 50 years ago and quality is no longer there. There are some Singers that work well but I have yet to find one that sounds as wonderfully quiet as a vintage FW.
I currently teach all kinds of classes to take care of FWs and I currently own 12 that I have purchased in various conditions and restored them all. One thing about the vintage FWs is that you can work on them yourself and there's no secrets because most anything you need to do can be seen in a video at the featherweight shop.
I just made a FW dust cover last week that had to have 1/4" seams (yes, there are 1/4" feet that work amazingly well), walking foot seams and free motion quilting. The FW 221 doesn't allow you to drop the feed dogs but you can find the sweet spot between forward and backward and cover the feed dog with some painters tape. It works great. Why would you want any other machine? Yes, I own a big Viking with all the bells and whistles but it's the FW that I sew on every day. Here's my dust cover, 100% done on my FW.