Welcome to Gaia! ::

We have a Brother... Its kinda old lol. But what I really like about it is my family has had this thing through out my childhood and I even got to fix it before my parents decided to junk it. But the is a problem with it, it doesn't do too well on fabrics that are very soft and/or frilly. So I have to do that part by hand... But I still love it to death.

What kind of sewing machines do you have?
Brother BM-2600. I bought it just before my wedding to finish making my wedding dress. The machine I was using before, that I was borrowing, got jammed and exploded T.T I have bad luck with sewing machines.

If you like yours, what about it do you like?
I wouldn't recommend this machine, but what I do like is the needle threader it has. It makes threading the needle really fast and easy.

It was one of the cheapest ones, but the best one that they had in the shop for my purposes.

The bobbin cover is plastic with a top mounting. This is good and bad. Good that you can see how much thread you have left, bad that it is only plastic and may not be durable.

If you dislike yours, what's wrong with it, or what machine would you rather have?
So many things are wrong or sub-optimal with my machine.

The markings are only on one side of the feed plate (when sometimes you just have to do things on the other side). The markings are not accurate when the needle is in the central position, only when it is almost all the way to the left (weird).

There isn't much room to the right of the presser foot for a lot of fabric (e.g. when sewing a petticoat) and when the needle comes down a big hurty thing comes down with it that often hits my hand if I'm not careful.

My machine always seems to feed the fabric on an angle, making straight sewing unnecessarily difficult.

The light is always on when the machine is turned on. This is annoying when I can only see my fabric markings with natural light, as I have to keep stopping and turning the machine off just to see if I am still on track.

The sleeve arm (whatever it is called) is too big even for a size 16 sleeve cuff. It just barely fits over and doesn't feed nicely.

My machine sometimes makes loud chopping sounds and I don't know why.

Sometimes when you change a stitch, it won't change over properly even though the dial is in the right place. You have to wait for the "clunk".

Any suggestions for sewing machines?
When picking one, ask lots of questions, know what you want, play with it and don't listen to anything the salesperson tells you. When I bought my machine, I asked why the feed plate didn't have measurements of both sides and she told me it's because you never sew the other way around. Well yes, I do and it would be very handy to be able to do so with some proper markings. I have been cursing her ever since. She also said you'd never have to sew with the light off, but yes that is something I'd like to be able to control, since it is hard to see my yellow tailor's chalk markings with that light on.

Shop around. Don't just go to one shop because they might only have one brand of sewing machine - all plasticy, junky and still expensive. You're going to have it for a long time, hopefully, so choose one you can be happy with.

My ideal sewing machine would be the ones we learned on at highschool. They had accurate markings on both sides of the plate, a great feed dog that you could raise and lower, independent light switch and speed control dials. They were made out of sturdy metal.

@Alyss
I liked all the sewing classes we had at highschool. Each year it was different. One year taught us fashion drawing and design and was technology focused with burning fabric and washing it to see the properties. Other years were more practical with sewing clothes. The last year of it taught us how to modify patterns and how to draft our own. I'm glad I went through all the years of it they had on offer at highschool, because that has given me a broad knowledge of sewing and techniques.