I have a few hundred magazines and many different quilting "how to" books. If it's an option for you, you should purchase a book for beginner quilters. It would be far superior to ANY magazine. I've seen really good ones which include large color illustrations for everything. A good book covers about everything you would need to know. I would prefer all my books to have spiral spines (or whatever I'm trying to say) so they stay open to any page, but most of them do not have the spiral. If you have a used book store in your area, it might have inexpensive quilt books on the shelf; also Connecting Threads and other mail order quilt product suppliers often have their "How To" books on sale OR if you have a Joann's nearby and a 40% or 50% off coupon, they have quite a large selection of books to choose from as well.