ta da!

I'd be leery of the auto foot pressure and auto tension- be sure you can adjust both manually. Also, does it have the larger harp area? I can't tell by the photo and didn't see anything in the specs. Other than that it looks like a really cool sm. Congrats!

Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies in MO.

In the relm of small world, I spent my teen age years in Bellevue. That was the 1950s. It was a sleepy little town with not much but middle class pretentions. This was long before Microsoft and all that sort of thing. Our family lived in Viewcrest, just to the north of the square. Those were troublesome times for me, as I was aching to see some of the world and knew that the place could not hold my attention. In 1960 Ileft at age 18, fleeing to California. I haven't been back since then, and I know it has grown up to a large city. What are you doing there? Inquiring minds want to know.

John

Anne Rogers wrote:

One of the nice things about the Brother is I found the manual online, on the Australian site, rather random that I even looked, but that's what happened. Knowing that I then looked hard for the Sapphire manual, with no results. I read that manual cover to cover, as far as I can tell, everything that the machine can do automatically, you can also override, which is good, but I'm going to write those two things on my list of checks/questions for tomorrow. The harp area is larger, but not as large from needle to the vertical bit as the Sapphire or your Janome

6600, but I did some measuring, hands, quilt rolls etc. and worked out that whilst I need more, the full 10 inches the Sapphire offers isn't a necessity.

So I'm getting excited! The frustrating thing is, I don't think I'll be crawling on the floor basting for a while and I have a queen size top that I really really want to start quilting. I guess this will make me practice though, I can baste smaller pieces at a table.

Anne

We're there for the usual reason, Microsoft! DH started working for them

13 months ago, so we're new to the area. I don't recognise Viewcrest as the name of a neighbourhood, it might be still used, I've just not noticed, or it might be out of use. I do know the area you mean though, the closest bit the Bellevue Square is being developed into high class apartments and Bellevue Downtown is constantly shooting up new towers! We live in a tucked away complex right near Crossroads Mall, it's a mile to work for DH, his building is right on the southern tip of MS campus, we're close to most amenities, without having to regularly deal with any of the crazy freeways. I'm the kind of person that dislikes the density of urban life, but hates driving enough that I won't choose to live out of town, which there are a lot of options to do in this area. We lived in Cambridge when we were in the UK, which always seemed big and busy to me, though I knew it wasn't, but we were so close to the countryside, even though it was the most boring countryside possible! Here, we get tantalising glimpses of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen, but it's frustratingly difficult to escape to it!

I've no idea how long we'll live here, whether choosing somewhere else to live in this area is something we'll ever do, or where we'll go if we decide to move on from here. We're happy here, I won't say we love it, but life is very manageable. We were prudent enough to make provision for moving back to the UK, rather than moving everything over here, the weakness of the dollar is no more worrying to us than anyone else, if we'd moved everything, we'd feel tied.

Anne

You can baste a large quilt on the table, too, even if it is larger than the table top. We've discussed this several times before; here's a link to one of those discussions

This one is from 2003, but we've discussed it more recently than that. If the link doesn't work for you, google groups and search for "baste quilt table"

Julia in MN

I don't expect to ever pin a quilt on the floor ever again. Besides the pain I get a perfect pin basted quilt using my banquet folding table. HArriet is my machine quilting hero:

book does a great job of expla> You can baste a large quilt on the table, too, even if it is larger than

Afraid to 'spend this amount of money' can be put into perspective. I bought an 'expensive for us at the time' Viking 990. used it for at least

12 years. divide that into how much you spent and see how much it cost you PER YEAR. Might help bring it into perspective. OR you could look at it this way......It did what I needed (sewed thru a stack of folded denim AND the humpjumper twice without skipping a stitch, breaking a needle or slowing down)---used it to where I burned the head up in it, had a complete new computer board put in, wore out the thing that switches it form going forward/backward).........in other words I WORE IT OUT before I bought a new one.

This shouldn't be looked at as a 2 year purchase.even if you trade it later..it needs to be what you plan on suing for a few ears..so it needs to fit YOUR needs for now and the future.

Now, let us know when you bring it home so we can Party Party Party with you

Butterfly (I'll bring the almond M&M's : )