To rip or to not rip
 

I'm sure I'm not the only one with a stack of quilting magazines hiding in the corner, right? Currently I am sitting on the floor under my drafting/cutting table looking through the mags searching for a way to use some of my stash. Yes, I dog-eared the corners when I first read them and then forgot about them. There has to be a better method. I've thought about tearing out the ones that look good & putting them in binders. The problem with that is my taste and style has changed drastically in the past 4 years so I hesitate to toss the ones I don't rip out, which still leaves a stack. Plus, I don't want to look like a hoarder. The fabric stash is bad enough, lol! Quandary!!

So...tell me, what do you do?

Only one stack? For those magazines you want to part with and have not had any pages torn out, check with your public library to see if you can donate them. When I lived in a big city, they would accept the magazines and charge 10 to 25 cents each. In the small rural place I live in now, they are free. Magazines also sell at rummage sales. The notebooks for what draws your interest can be gone through from time to time to weed out some as your taste changes. I buy boxes of the plastic sleeves and try to put every other pattern in a sleeve.

When I read a magazine, there is usually only 1 or 2 patterns I think I would like to use. So, I photo copy those and put them in binder plastic sleeves. I have a binder for baby; florals, traditional, etc.

I did that (cut out the patterns I like and put them in clear page protectors and a binder). I now have 3 or 4 binders that I occasionally look through. MOST of the patterns I still like - some of them I wonder at my state of mind at the time. Some of them are still on the to-do list and some of them are just there for inspiration. IMO it is much easier to look through a binder of things that matter or mattered at one time than to spend a lot of time thumbing through the entire magazine. I also unsubscribed from all magazines as there is SOOOOO much available on the internet (blogs, pinterest, etc).

I'm thinking I need to weed out my magazines too. My current plan is to go through a year of a time of one specific publication, keeping anything I really want a copy of by scanning it into my computer. Then I will take the bundle and gift it to a fellow guild member I've mentioned this to, and when she is done, she will re-gift it onwards herself.....

I keep a small collection of complete magazines. If a magazine only has an article or pattern or two that I like, I cut it out & scan it. So much easier to find what I like when I have it as a digital copy than to sift through magazines. Most of the time now I find inspiration online through Pintrest or Instagram or Google images so I just try to put good enough descriptions on my digital files that I can find what I want by typing in a few search terms in File Explorer.

Love Quilting magazines, I go thru them and rip articles and patterns that I like. Then I take the magazine to the Guild and put it on the free table. Since that's the source of most of my magazines, I know that others do the same thing. As my tastes change, I toss the pattern.

I put post a notes on front of mag with the names of the patterns I want to make. I purged over half of my quilting magazine. If there is just one or two, scan them and print them out.

I rip out the patterns I like and put in those sleeves then in a binder. There is so much free stuff on the internet also. The only magazine I get now is Block and consider them a book. I often get magazines on the free table at guild. Most of them are very old and just do not inspire me. I think I have about 10 magazines that have quite a few things I like in them. They live in the bathroom.

I go through the binder occasionally and toss out things that no longer interest me. I have a very small sewing room and just cannot put too much stuff in there, One binder for charity patterns and another for all others.