A new board? I just heard about it from the Furina thread on /b/!

Does anyone know a good model of sewing machine? I want to make a dress like in the attached pic, but hand sewing is so incredibly boring!!!

Based on what I looked up, Singer is garbage, Brother is ok, and Janome and Juki are very good but expensive. I'm looking for something as a starter-intermediate who'll probably do a sewing project once every few months. My budget is somewhere in the 200-300 USD range, and I don't think I can rely on second-hand sewing machines (even though a lot of forum posts say to do so).

Any ideas, /j/?