Heart Wallhanging

Here's what I'm working on now - this was kind of an impulse wallhanging, done over a weekend. I was surfing on Bonnie's site again, and really loved her easy pineapple blossom block. What caught my eye was the line made diagonally thru the center of the block, by the triangles and squares.

I redrew it in EQ, made the block smaller, and sorted thru my stash of fat quarters and found three pale pinks, a good deep purple, and three hot pinks. The hot pink with the white in it isn't as contrasty as the photo makes it look, it blends in better than that.

I'm REALLY trying not to buy any more FQ's till I use some of them up. It's just so tempting to see them on e-Bay for less than $1, including shipping. The delectable mountain quilt used up my favorite forest green fabrics, as well as most of the teal, turquoise, and navy blue. Making all those sawtooth triangles let me use even the smaller scraps.

Think my next big purchase has GOT to be a sewing machine. My heavy old cast aluminum workhorse of a Kenmore (from the early 70's) still sews great, straight, zig zag, and reverse... but even though I found a walking foot for it online, there's no darning foot, so I can't do free motion quilting. I can do straight lines, verrrrrry slow stitch in the ditch, and big swoopy curves, but no stipple. Nothing where I have to change directions, no fans, feathers, etc.

My problem is, everyone I know has a different brand of machine, and they all swear by whichever one they own. Even when I ask specifically for drawbacks to the machine they have, nobody wants to admit to any. I guess it's like buying a car, nobody says "Gosh, I wish I'd paid $500 more and gotten the automatic sliding doors," even if they really wish they had. So do I go Bernina? Pfaff? Husqvarna, Singer, Brother, Janome? There are so many models out there, like cars, do you want the Luxury Edition, the Sporty Model, the Basic324a, the Max582b?

What I'd like is one machine that does everything.

*dreaming*

I want one that I can hook to some sort of frame and do quilting, small stuff, not king-size. Would you call that a shortarm? :p I'd like one that I could hook to my computer and program it to do embroidery that I draw myself. Heck, let me draw a pantograph pattern and program the machine to quilt that too. I want it to do freemotion script, so I could do things like sew quotes from those little candy conversation hearts around the borders of the heart wallhanging. Some sort of attachment to let me do smocking and tucks would be fun. And let it all cost under $1500, plz. Oh, and don't forget a stitch regulator too. And superb customer support. And make it light enough to tote to quilt retreats, but heavy enough to not slither or bounce when I sew with it.

Not asking much, am I?