I read a lot of posts about Singer this, Viking that, etc., etc., one what sewing machine is a quality machine and so on, so forth... But, "good" is a subjective and relative term, hard to quantify to someone with very little experience with sewing machine, that has no base reference point. So, my wife has an little Janome Gem Gold (I think that's the model) machine. It's kinda small, has a few built in stitches, it's easy to thread and use. So, how does it rank on the scale of "Good" to "Crappy" sewing machines?

One thing I do know is that our normal fabric stores like Jo-Ann's doesn't even hardly stock bobbins for it. I figure that's an indication that it might not rank that high. It's worked well (to my layman eye) on our home projects so far. I've made a tarp, a bivy, several stuff sacks, etc., I've altered my kids' Halloween costumes on it, and my wife quilts with it. She has the hardest time, because she sews sometimes through a LOT of layers of fabric. On one recent quilt, she was sewing through, I think, 16 layers of cotton flannel fabric. It was a rag quilt, each square was four layers, and where four squares met in the corners she had to sew 2" of length of 16 layers thick before it dropped back down to the 8 layers again.

Thanks,
BM

I have a New Home which is now Janome. I like it. Not the most common thing for sure. But as we know around here a company's size has nothing to do with quality. If it works and gets the job done without swearing much at/about the machine then it is a good one.