Lois-nounoe

I get Fons and Porter, Quiltmaker, MaCalls, and Quilt. Only thing is they all come at about the same time and I have 2 months to wait for the next ones! Hubby always makes fun but I tell him he is jealous cause he doesn't get any fun mail. All the rest is bills and ads. LOL The only thing I find is that most of the mags have so many ads now and a lot of the quilts they show patterns are not available or they are kits to buy.

fabric=fun

Another source for quilt mags available for review is our public libraries. Our relatively small library carries Quilt World and Piecework. Back issues of both available to take home as soon as new issue arrives. Neighboring larger library in our free loan area has many more. A good way to sample before subscribing or just saving dollars altogether.

One of the two guilds I belong to also does the 25 cent purchase at the guild library table - money earned buys books for the library.

I think that inspiration (ideas), education(techniques), motivation(competition winners/pattern makers), production (free patterns), creative interpretation (designer interviews and their quilts), world news information(guilds, shows, products on the market) are components to look for in the table of contents. This can guide us to the type of magazine that will satisfy us, the proportion of each varies greatly depending on the mission/purpose the magazine producer has.

Rose Marie

I enjoy looking thru them and look forward to getting them in the mail but they are useless for patterns.
I have tried to use a filing system to track patterns but it was too much work.
Yesterday I went thru dozens looking for a particular style quilt I would normally not make but needed for a project. It was not worth the effort.
Until they start putting pictures of all the projects on the back cover I will stop subscribing to them.
Right now I get about six different ones and Fons and Porters Love of Quilting at least has a page showing all the quilt inside the issue but it is not on the back cover. A couple of others have pictures on the index page but still not good enough.

pieces

I subscribed to Fons and Porter and cancelled after the first issue. I read through the whole magazine in a few minutes.
There was not 1 quilt /pattern in the magazine that was of interest to me. Save your money. You can find everything you need on the web. Or ask the experienced quilters here.

graphicsbysue

Just Google "Free Quilt Patterns" You will find more patterns
than you will every be able to make. :thumbup:

Bev

Since organizing my quilting room and magazines, I've narrowed my subscriptions down to just two. They are Quiltmaker and American Patchwork & Quilting. Here's the way I did it. Over the years I have had subscriptions to most of the leading ones, and I always put bright post-its sticking out of the tops of the pages on the patterns or articles I am most interested in. Now they are all in those black mag. holders Walmart carries. They're organized by title alphabetically. So when I looked at them all together on the shelves, the ones with the overwhelming number of post-its were the above two. I took some time to look over the issues of those two titles and found that they truly were my favorites. So the others are being dropped as their subscriptions expire. I also went through and took out all the magazines that came before the year 2005. That leaves me with five years of issues left on the bookshelves. I cleared up a lot of space by doing this. I'm also saving a bit of money. I figure I've got enough patterns in those saved magazines to last me the rest of my life. That is, if I live to be two hundred.

sylvia77

Bev, Great minds must think alike, as I did just what you did and I came to the same conclusion. Where at in FL do you live? I lived there for 22 yrs.

Bev

I live in Gainesville where it's freezing cold right now and my quilts are sure coming in handy.
I think the reason my mind works the way it does (the organizing of my magazines) is because my entire working life was in libraries. It's an old librarians' trick to find out what books are the most popular. Before computers that is.

sylvia77

Bev, I lived in Lakeland. It's cold here now but great for sewing!

AliKat

That's why I olike to spend some time at my local bookstore, drink coffee, and browse the different Quilting/Sewing magazines. Then I can buy just what I want.
My quilting groups also share magazines with each other.
We tend to be somewhat frugal.