Eye Candy Friday...

 ...in which I celebrate my birthday a little early.

First, a look at our garden path on a cloudy August morning.

My birthday is coming up and I've been wanting to get a new sewing machine for a while. I love my Pfaff 7550, but it's getting kind of old. I bought it in 1997, exactly 27 years ago today. It is a great machine and used to interface with my Mac so I could design my own stitches. That capability went away within a few years. My biggest concern is that the computer is going to give out and there probably won't be any replacements for it. Pfaff was purchased by Singer and I doubt that they'll support a 1997 machine.

My favorite Pfaff feature is the Integrated Dual Transportation (IDT)--built-in dual feed and I wanted to stick with Pfaff because of it. I found a dealer who could service my Pfaff and also sells Pfaffs. I had a couple of models in mind. I was a little disheartened when the dealer told me about the declining quality of the new Pfaffs since the Singer takeover and the fact that feet and bobbins can be difficult to get.

However, he told me that Bernina also had a built in dual feed feature. My mom always loved her Bernina, so I decided to take a look. I did a little testing on a couple of models and he showed me several other features. I feel in love with the B 590, but it wasn't cheap. As it turned out, all of their Berninas were on sale, with a larger discount on the floor models. I bought the floor model!

While I might not use the embroidery feature very often, I'll enjoy the rest of the features. :)