Sewing machine recommendations

[WildCherryBlossom]

So I've gathered up my savings, Christmas money etc and I'm ready to get a new sewing machine. My only machine at the moment is a wonderful inherited vintage Singer. Beautiful and blissfully reliable but very basic.

I do a lot of sewing at a hobby level: home furnishing, dress making, quilting... so new machine needs to be an all rounder. I'm really feeling the limitations of my beloved old machine and want more stitches and functions to play with. I do want something with a free arm for little projects and dressmaking rather than a dedicated quilting machine.

I'd also like a machine I can grow into. So, for example I have never used twin needles for dress making but if my machine were able to, that would be great.

My upper budget is about £800.

Any recommendations? I like the idea of the stitch reliability of computerised machines. At the moment I'm feeling drawn to Brother or Janome but would love to hear what machine you have and why you love it.

Thank you!

You should feel no guilt at all Niminy, you should be feeling pride
You will be enhancing your life and that of those around you.

It's good advice to keep your old machine for when your new machine is being serviced or you want to use it to teach someone else how to use a sewing machine.

OP, is this having any effect on your decision making?

It's arriving on Tuesday! I'm so excited!

Fantastic Niminy. Did you buy any extra feet? Does it still come with a 7 year warranty?

I can’t remember how often you need to have it serviced to maintain warranty rights now. I did ask and it wasn’t as often as annually. I use mine a fair bit so have it done most years.

@hevonbu no way would I get rid of my Singer. It's my absolute treasure (and petite enough to take on holiday - which I like to do ☺️) but I needed something which I could do more with. The singer doesn't like heavy weight Fabrics much and has a tiny throat which is restrictive with large projects.

To update on the thread: I have ended up getting a Janome which had included in the package lots of feet. Berninas look amazing but I had an ever increasing stack of unfinished projects and I needed an all rounder, with all the necessary attachments and functions to complete them rather than saving up for waking feet, open toed embroidery feet etc etc. Today I'm using the zip foot as I'm putting together some box cushions from a fairly heavy weight upholstery weight velvet. It's making pretty light work of it. The other night I attached the binding to a massive 6" x 6" quilt, which was fairly straightforward.

Once I've finished the box cushions I'm planning to make myself a Jersey dress (with twin needles)

So far I'm extremely happy!

Elanor (great name btw) I ordered some extra feet as well - an invisible zip foot, a walking foot and an edgestitch foot. That added to the price quite a bit but those will get a lot of use. It still comes with a 7 year warranty which is one of the reasons why I went for new, having spent a load of time looking at reconditioned 830s on Ebay.

I think getting your machine serviced is a good investment if you use it a lot, so I'll definitely keep my old one as a back-up. (Anyway, my mum, who died last year, bought it for me so it has sentimental value. And I'm buying the new one with money she left me.)

Look forward to hearing how you get on with it Niminy. I bet you can't wait for it to arrive!