Welcome to the Family.
Today we welcome a new member of the family:
After agonizing for days, I finally settled on this machine yesterday. It's a Baby Lock Quest. Last year, Greg tried in vain to fix my little Singer. He's a helluva fixer, but my machine was beyond hope. The past couple of weeks the itch came back strong, and I realized I needed wanted a new machine.
I researched this exhaustively, and learned many things: 1) The sewing community is passionately brand-loyal. 2) Prices for the 'better' brands of machines cannot be found online. 3) Prices for these machines are negotiable. 4) Manufacturers of these machines force purchases at dealers in order to maintain warranties. It's honestly a lot like purchasing a car, only you can't find any prices online. It's a big fat secret, held closely by little old ladies with chains on their horn-rimmed glasses.
I spent most of yesterday morning tooling around south county to the different dealers. One dealer offered me the Quest floor model for approximately 1/3 of the MSRP. I took that figure to another dealer because I wanted to see if it was really as much of a value as I thought. The second dealer had the same machine priced at $450 more than that quoted to me at the first dealer, but met the first dealer's price after griping about how the other dealer is looney and selling machines at cost. SOLD.
Now I have to make lots of stuff to justify the purchase. For what it cost, it ought to be able to get up and walk itself to the fabric store, make purchases, come home and sew stuff on its own. Greg, of course, is fantastic about it all and told me from the beginning to get whatever I wanted. Still, I wanted to consult with him because this was a ginormous purchase. He gave the okay, and though I was sick about it, I guess I'll get over it. After all, we're not buying that house anymore.
Maybe it won't be so hard to fall in love with this machine. After all, it's not every machine that can do THIS:
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