Quote Originally Posted by auld argonian View Post
I'm sure that you'll get some good recommendations from the more experienced sewing members. I just wanted to toss in a comment on my observations on sewing machines. Hopefully this is more-or-less "on topic"; I think it is.

The biggest problem that almost everyone I know has had with sewing machines is that they get put "out of adjustment" and the machine owner has to find a sewing machine expert to re-adjust them. I assume that the problem is that the machine user has fiddled with the various tensions and what-not and can't get them back to the factory specs. Getting a repair person to set the thing back up seems to get to be expensive and a long wait...there aren't so many sewing machine repair people around anymore...when the repair guy shows up at one of the local fabric stores he gets treated like a visiting head of state.

Thus, I would suggest that just finding a good, reliable machine may be just half the battle and that being able to get that puppy tweaked up by a repairman might add significantly to the cost. I'd be interested to hear from some of those with wider experience on this.

Best

AA
All the above is true, and one of the best places to find a good machine is in the repair shops themselves. Go to your local yellow pages or BBB and search out Sewing Machine Repair.

They often have machines that have been brought in for repair, and then abandoned.

They are often willing to sell them for just the cost of the repair bill.