christy81

I went into a couple quilting stores today. In the one the lady tried to sell me sewing machines that had almost 300 stitches and were $2500 at the least. The other store had a Janome SUV1108. For $200 it included the walking foot and the 1/4" foot. It seems like a good deal. I wanted to know if anyone has had any experience with this machine and if so did you like it or not? Thanks.

Jane Quilter

if it has one zig zag, and i needed a machine or plan to give one to a child starting sewing/quilting that would do fine.

I would never buy the 300 stitch model and i have been sewing for 50 years. Too much to go wrong. Keep it simple, buy multiple specialty machines.

I would classify the $200 machine as a "simple piecing machine" and enjoy it.

ManiacQuilter2

People are a lot like car salesman so they are going to point you to the more expense machine. You need to tell them what you budget is before even looking an any machines. I wouldn't look at any machine unless it had the button-hole stitch since I use that stitch I use for machine applique. I don't use any of my many optional stitches either.

Prism99

I am not familiar with that machine. The biggest issue with machines in this price range is often small harp size (the area under the arm). Small harps work for piecing and quilt-as-you-go projects, but don't work well for quilting things larger than baby or lap size quilts.

Here is a link to the Janome machine online:
http://www.janomeflyer.com/janome-suv-1108/

I do not see any mention on the website of needle up/down, a feature that quilter's ***really*** like because it helps so much with both piecing and quilting. This machine also does not have variable adjustment of stitch width, which makes it much less valuable for machine applique. It also has only 8 stitches (which ones, I don't know). If you ever want to do machine binding (instead of doing the last step by hand), it is ***really*** nice to have a machine that does some kind of decorative stitch (I like the feather stitch) without a center line. (My old Bernina, alas, does a beautiful feather stitch but it is all based off a center line which means that any of my small deviations from the edge aggravate me no end. I am thinking of buying a low-end machine just to get that specific stitch for machine bindings!)

Personally, I do not like using a quarter-inch foot for a couple of reasons. One is because every quarter-inch foot is different, and most end at an "exact" quarter-inch, which is not the same as the "scant" quarter-inch we quilters often need. Also, I do not like having to keep my eyes glued to the edge of the foot when I am piecing; very non-relaxing for me. Instead, I create a physical guide on the base of my machine using strips cut out of moleskin, an inexpensive adhesive material found in the foot section of pharmacies. This allows me to strip piece very accurately at a high rate of speed -- much faster and more accurate for me than a quarter-inch foot.

A walking foot is useful for quilting on a domestic machine, but that is the only thing I have ever used it for. Now that I have a midarm frame setup for quilting, I rarely use it at all.

What I would suggest you do is check out machines at Walmart. They have some nice machines in the $200 price range. The nice thing about Walmart is that you can take the machine home, try it out, and if you don't like it you can return it to the store (I think it's within 30 days) and get a full refund, no questions asked. Many dealers will NOT allow you to return a machine for refund under any circumstances. All they will do is allow you to trade for another machine.

Amazon has a similar return policy. The only thing with Amazon is that if the machine is not defective (you have simply changed your mind), you need to pay the return shipping. They pay the return shipping if the machine is defective. If you are comfortable with Amazon, here is a link to the machine I would recommend over the Janome you looked at:
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Featur...dp/B000JQM1DE/
Many quilters here on the QB have this machine and like it.