Sewing Machines

I’ve been looking for a new sewing machine. My old one is about 20 years old, and frankly, I wore it out. It’s a Kenmore that has seen everything from chiffon to canvas, sometimes one on top of the other.

I need a machine that can do everything the old one did and hold up at least as well. You’d think this wouldn’t be hard to find because I pretty much live on straight stitch and zigzag with a little hem stitch or button hole thrown in now and then. All of this is stuff you’d expect of any machine. I mean, I’m not looking to embroider on my machine since I prefer to do that by hand and the kind of quilting I do doesn’t need anything fancy. So this should be easy, right?

Not.

The problem is the durability thing. Apparently the latest trend in sewing machines is disposability.

Jo Anne’s Fabric’s had a sale on of Singer machines. Apparently Singer is all they carried. I was all set to settle for one of these, but I was confronted by bars. I’ll explain that tomorrow with a photo. I’ll admit these machines are extremely cheap. I’ve been known to drop half the price of one on fabric in a single shopping trip.

Um… I did mention I have ABLE, right? Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. Yeah, I got it bad. Lately I haven’t been able to make many inroads into the piles of fabric I’ve acquired because my machine just isn’t cutting it.

Oh, right. The new sewing machine.

I went to catch the sale at Jo Anne’s twice. The first time was before the official sales date started, and the store was packed anyway, so I didn’t worry too much when I couldn’t get anyone to come over and help me look at machines. I knew I wasn’t going to get to try them out because of how they were displayed, but I thought I could at least discuss them. I went back a couple days later.

No go. In fact, when I finally chased a clerk down, she walked away while I was talking to her. For real. All she was willing to do was unlock the bars on the cage so I could get at them to take to the counter. Yeah, like I’m going to drop a couple hundred without thinking about it.

I went to a sewing and janitorial place where they had machines set up so you could actually try them. What a difference! The sales staff was wonderful. I’ll get back to that tomorrow too. The price, however… gulp. And the machines were a brand I’m not familiar with; Baby Lock.

So I left and checked out a couple other places and went online to look around. I discovered the Singer’s official web site had NOTHING in the way of warranty info. But Baby Lock does. Guess what else I discovered;

http://www.babylock.com/a-line/audrey/

That’s right, they have a sewing machine named Audrey. How cool is that?