Home sewing machine recommendations, please!

[Rocks]

I'd be thrilled with any of those Janome machines. The one I got (Janonme Arctic Crystal) was pretty cheap. The 7318 looks really good! If you haven't, look up YouTube videos of all the machines you're looking at. They were a big help to me.

[haraya]

Rocks, great suggestion!! thank you so much for that idea!

[Juliana]

Hola! Absolute beginner to sewing and sewing machines here (pretty sure I learned basic stitches in Girl Scouts when I was like 7 or 8, but how much do I remember? Absolutely nothing). I'm a little surprised that everything's still out of stock basically everywhere. I was hoping to spend no more than $170 USD and mainly just wanted to learn how to hem pants (including denim) (I'm 4'10") and maybe, someday, eventually figure out how to make plush toys? Or quilting? It would be nice to have something that can grow with me, so to speak. But right now it's very hard to figure out what prices were like pre-pandemic. I can't even get accurate price ranges! Does anyone have any specific recommendations they can offer, based on that? I'm trying to wait for things to go back to normal, but would like to plan ahead and do research in advance.

[haraya]

Hi Juliana,

I don't know where you're located, but you might try looking first on Craigslist. I got my first sewing machine from a local post, years ago, for all of $60. Compare with the brands recommended above. Bonus - the seller might be able to help you troubleshoot if you run into issues! And manuals are often available online.

[Rocks]

I got my machine in April and they were already fairly scarce by then. The supply chain must take time to rebound.
A friend of mine posted a picture with a Brother CS6000i recently and I was like “where’d you get that?!” and he said his sister in law didn’t use it and gave it to him. I had to swallow a moment of jealousy. Lol. So like Haraya said, check Craigslist, FB marketplace, and with family and friends.

[melodie]

I learned on a Janome 20 years ago and it's still running strong. In adulthood, I purchased a Janome 8200 for quilting and it's amazing. For the price, the quality is great (all metal parts), and cheaper to repair if you need it than other brands. My sewing machine "guy" said that many brands like Singer and Brother were bought out by a large Chinese conglomerate in the late '90s, and that Bernina Pfaff parts can be hard to find. He likened Janome to Toyota and Bernina to BMWs.

[dchang0]

A bit late to help the OP, but this advice is for anyone considering Brother:

Brother USA has been cutting corners on their manufacturing due to shrinkflation (the devaluing of the US dollar means it's hard to turn a profit in manufacturing; rather than raise prices first, manufacturers cut corners first, raise prices second).

The result has been that Brother's newest product designs are flimsy and warranty support is poor. If you read the 1-star reviews of Brother sewing machines on various sites, they talk about cheap, flimsy plastic parts and early failures and painful repair processes. (Singer is the same way now--also a consequence of shrinkflation.)

If you want a Brother sewing machine, get a used, older model (I'd say at least 5 years old) that still has parts available via repair shops.

The OP chose a Janome, which is what I'd recommend.