PAMAR

Oh - one other thing - my Bernina has many, many fancy stitches. The only ones I have used, other than the straight stitch, is the zigzag and blanket stitch for applique. I have owned the machine for about 4 years.

So, as I have read on the Quilting Board many times, decide what you really want or need in a machine and then purchase the best you can afford.

Happy hunting!

DonnaC

I'm a garment sewer as well as a quilter, so let me offer an opinion. An assortment of stitches would be really helpful, but really to sew garments well, you don't need much! A nice zig zag (and multi zig zag for sewing knits), a blanket stitch, and a decent one-step buttonholer would be great. You can get an inexpensive machine with these stitches and probably a few others, for a small amount of money. Somebody had posted recently about a great deal on a Brother machine at Wawak: http://www.wawak.com/products/produc...ewing-Machine/. Only $124.99 for a 50 stitch machine, as you can see. This is way more than you would even need to get started garment sewing!

Since you already know you love quilting, and you loved the straight-stitch machine, maybe spend the $$ on that machine and then buy a little starter machine (like the above) for garment sewing?