first off, i am delighted to find a forum about sewing, my favorite hobby
---check out Craftsy classes, they are an online site that offers many classes on a ton of different crafts. You pay once for a class and you can keep it forever, and they are downloadable. Each class has about 6 to 8 lessons. I love them, being enrolled in about 25 classes, which i watch over and over. They always have sales on their class price, never never pay the full price. And about one every 4 months, they have a "clearance" price on classes of $19.99. I've taken dozens of sewing classes (at community college and joanns and so forth), the craftsy classes are the best!
---always always always prewash (or pretreat) your fabric. no exceptions
---another place that i really like for fabric is fabric-mart, most excellent online sales
---check out youtube or a craftsy class for alternative seam finishes (other than pinking shears)
---easiest fabrics (imho) are cotten and linen - difficulty goes up with the slippery factor, any slippy slidey fabric is harder. Unstable knits can be challenging as well.
---the best sewing machine question is harder, as I have found dealers to be not as informed or honest as I would like. Recommendations from other sewers are best. Sewing machine manufacturing has changed quite a bit in my day. Most lightweight machines have internal parts made of plastic, which wear down faster, as opposed to the old machines (like my mothers singer) that have metal parts and were made to last a lifetime. Personally, I like Phaff and Bernina's. I thought allbrands.com had good prices on a range of machines.
I am sure there is some type of machine that will do the cutting you asked about, but probably mega bucks and made for commercial production. In one of the craftsy classes, instructor Janet Prey (not sure of spelling) talks about and instructs "stack cutting", which is just like it sounds, a way to cut multiples of the same pattern piece.
anyway good luck and let us know how it is going
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