I hope to be sewing machine shopping in the next few months. I plan to take with me several sets of doodle cloths to test the short listed machines at quilting, heavy-duty, sheers, knits and mixed. Maybe even some of my own regular thread plus metallic and elastic threads. My biggest limiting factor (after space & budget) is that I quilt so I want a fabulous free motion foot as well as a big "mouth" meaning will take half a lightweight queen sized quilt rolled up even if I have to squeeze it a bit as I sew.

Lots of great tips in this thread, stuff that's easy to forget to ask about when sales staff is blabbering. I should make a list to take along with my test pieces.

My workhorse is a 1940-something Singer Featherweight, which sews denim and lightweight leather just fine provided the drive belt is properly adjusted, although when hemming jeans it does require manual help to bite through the 4 layers of flat fell seams. It has great old attachments for hemming, shirring, ruching and whatnot and the buttonholer is excellent, doing a far better job than my newer machine. (Caveat if you're using a Featherweight buttonholer for the first time: Do a few practice runs to figure out proper alignment. But they always look so much tidier than any I've seen made with a zigzag machine and they have never sprung a thread or needed any repair.) I have a 20-year-old dinky something or other that has zigzag and basic embroidery stitches but it's hopeless for denim or sheers. Having the other machine, that limitation was an acceptable compromise for the price at the time but it would be rather nice to have 1 machine and 1 set of bobbins. But what am I thinking, I'll probably never get rid of that old Featherweight--it sounds wonderful, feels wonderful and smells wonderful to use, and is itself a work of art.