I'm really surprized that so many people don't like QNL. I love it. I don't like the magazines that show me how to make a simple quilt that I can figure out for myself, or the ones that show me how great something looks with a particular manufacturer's line of fabric. (Wonder who paid for that article!) I would much rather select my own fabrics, thank you, or use scraps, or just about anything other than make exactly what is shown. I can usually figure out a pieced pattern by looking at it, and then playing with the design on EQ6, so I read the magazines more for the pictures of quilts than for the directions. I guess what I get from QNL is inspiration for things that are a little different - not that I'm up to trying most of them yet, but I like seeing the art quilts, the old quilts, and many that are beyond my skills at this time. I the the quilts that I see in QNL are much more original than the ones in the other magazines. And I like seeing news of quilt shows all over the world.
I also find that, with almost any quilt magazine, what I like the first time I go through it is not necessarily what catches my eye a month or two later. When I'm ready to start a new project, I often sit down with a stack of old magazines and just start turning pages to get inspiration.