in with the new!

It's about time I'm writing this post!  I kicked things off a few weeks ago with a post explaining why I was about to buy a new sewing machine.  Spoiler alert: I bought one.  And I'm head-over-heels in love.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, a college friend of mine left a comment on said initial post suggesting that I get a Juki.  For those of you not "in the know," Jukis are amazing machines, but they are straight-stitch only -- meaning they only go forwards and backwards.  I'd thought long and hard about whether I'd be throwing it into the consideration pot, but I ended up deciding to skip it.  Jukis still aren't cheap, and since I haven't been sewing for such a long time that I know exactly what I'll be using it for, I wanted to give myself the options of a non-straight-stitch machine.  There may be a day when a Juki enters my life, but (another spoiler alert) for now it remains on the wish list.

Rather than trekking up to Pocono Sew & Vac, I went with another DCMQG member to the Fredericksburg Quilt Show.  In retrospect, there are pros and cons to doing the show route instead of a store.  You can for sure get the best deals at a show, but chances are that the selection won't be quite as good.  Nearly all stores only carry one brand, so that wasn't too different (each vendor was representing a different brand), with the exception of Pocono, since they carry just about everything -- but they only had Janomes at the show.  I went with a budget in mind, but I knew there was a decent chance of it staying within those parameters.

Before going, I was 90% sure I would be coming home with the Pfaff 4.2.  I'd heard nothing but rave reviews, and I've known a couple of people who have been really frustrated with their Janomes -- the other frontrunner.  I didn't even consider Bernina -- they're just way too expensive -- and while open to Husquvarna Viking and Babylock, I knew much less about them.  So in my head, that Pfaff was nearly mine, and I'd go through the motions with Janome and possibly the others to be sure.

We started off looking at the Janomes, and I have to say that they were pretty amazing.  Most importantly, the stitch quality couldn't have been better -- you can't distinguish between the front and the back.

I'm not much of a Free Motion quilter, but the top's the back and the bottom's the front.  Beautiful.

Janomes are still made entirely in house, and they're lovely machines.  There's a nice little door you can open up and peek into.

Oooh, gadgety!

But...the price.  I'm not going to discuss price here (if you're in the market, I'm happy to chat about it, but I'd prefer not to discuss any of that publicly).  Even with the show discount, and knowing how much the 8200 or 8900 would have been at the Janome dealer in the area, it was still definitely above my budget.  And since it was our first stop, off we went to continue exploring.

Pfaff was next.  The price of the 4.2 was much easier to swallow, just for starters, and the dealer is in Alexandria, making it easy to service.  It had this awesome hover feature; essentially, when you stop sewing, the foot lifts up a bit and "hovers" over the fabric, so you don't have to lift the presser foot up and down.    But when I sewed those first few stitches...it wasn't what I expected.  Not quite as smooth.  I also noticed that to get the feed dogs pulling the fabric, it has to be nearly touching the needle, which I found really strange, but it was a function of the hover feature that I could imagine getting used to.

But then we did some FMQ samplers again.  And wow...could you really see a difference in the stitch quality, and not in the direction I was hoping.

Lovely on the top (top photo), but that back is a disaster (bottom)!  This was with the auto-tension setting.  And yes, I'm not a free motion pro, but I wasn't a pro when trying the Janomes, either.

We were left pondering.  At this point (and keep in mind we'd only made two stops!) we were exhausted and headed to a chat session at Qdoba.  The manager of Pocono S&V who was there made a very good point when we were first playing with the Janomes -- what really matters and what you really want to pay for is great stitch quality.  And he's 100% right.  Fancy gadgets are fun, but the point of a sewing machine is for it to sew really damn well.

I'm glad we took a lunch break; we came back and stopped by the Babylock and Viking booths, but weren't impressed by the harp space in either and didn't even bother trying them.  So bad we went to Pocono and the Jaonmes where more sewing ensued.  We kept chatting with Paul, the manager, and because their store carries all the brands, we felt no pressure with him either way; he made clear that we were always welcome at the store.  At this point, I was already leaning in the Janome direction, even though it was much more than I'd hoped to spend.  What ultimately sealed the deal was when Paul told us that Pfaff had been sold within the last few years and their quality had been declining a bit (note: Pocono S&V sells Pfaff).  And with that, both my lovely guild-mate and I bit the bullet and bought 8900s!  We couldn't have gotten a better deal -- trust me -- and they shipped new, in box and arrived a few days later.  I'd be lying if I said those days of waiting weren't killing me -- I've never bought anything like this for myself and I felt SICK.

It's here!

And now that it's here and I've been sewing and quilting away, I am enamored and then some.  I'm SO GLAD I took the plunge.

For comparison's sake - look how much bigger that harp space is!  New machine on the left, if you didn't figure that out.

I'm still working on figuring out all the things it does; when a sewing machine comes with an instruction manual and a DVD, it takes time.  But really, I am so thrilled and can't wait to start blogging about finishes with this new piece of amazingness!

Happy retirement, Fred!