About Us

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In 2011, following the cancellation of their former magazine, Melissa Thompson Maher and Jake Finch decided they had nothing to lose by starting their own magazine. Both are journalists and completely addicted stitchers who knew there were more people like them in the q-niverse, and they were too naive to be afraid of the big, bad world of publishing.

With no time to lose, little money to spend and some amazing friends to help, they launched GenerationQMagazine.com online. Modeled after the print magazines they knew so well, the goal was to provide one magazine-style feature, article or project almost every day on the eZine for free to build their readership and eventually transition into a print magazine. Almost from the start they had a community of like-minded stitch addicts supporting the eZine and spreading the word.

Six months later, the GenQ team launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the seed money needed to fund a debut print issue of Generation Q Magazine. The goal was to raise $20,000 in 45 days. There was such a humbling amount of online support and interest for the magazine that the goal was met in eight days! Ultimately the team raised $28,000 and launched into print in the Spring of 2012, all because of the love from the stitching community.

And community IS what GenQ is all about. Before anything else we do, we are a community of modern and contemporary quilters and sewists who love to create, who welcome new ideas and styles while respecting what’s come before, and who enjoy creative expression in all forms. GenQ allows us to explore and share today’s creative lifestyle, with a strong emphasis on fun and that sometimes slight push through our sensibilities. Our mission is simple: All of our content needs to entertain, instruct, inform or inspire. At the end of the day, we know it’s all about the fabric, needle and thread.

We still maintain our free eZine, with new posts offered at least weekly. We’re different from a blog in that our content is a little longer, a little more in-depth and reflects the world of print magazines from which we all were birthed. We have extensive archives of all of our past posts and love when you spend time with us there.

Our print magazine, Generation Q Magazine, is published bi-monthly. Content in our print issue is unique to the print; we don’t reuse the same content to fill our eZine. It’s loaded with lots of fun, informative features and a handful of patterns. Some ask why we often choose to post full patterns from our print issue onto the eZine. For two reasons. First, because GenQ in print is a smaller size (about the size of an iPad), often the templates needed for our project won’t work in print. Second, we would rather dedicate our paper pages for more fun content and offering full PDF downloads of the patterns on the eZine for free allows us to do that.

Right now, GenQ in print is available through our wonderful group of quilt shops (please buy from them first–there’s a big list HERE), international newsstands and bookstores and subscriptions through this website. We also stock most of our back issues for sale.

Later this year (2015) we will launch digital versions of Generation Q Magazine. First we’ll have our back issues available in PDF downloads. Eventually we’ll move into what we call the “bells and whistle” versions, which will have embedded videos and other fun features. But one thing at a time, we say around here.

If you have any questions, comment or concerns, please reach out to us. Melissa can be found HERE. As editor in chief, she’s in charge of all of our content. Jake can be found HERE. She (yes, she’s a she) serves as publisher and handles all of the business operations along with some of the content needs. We are a small, private company that thrives on personal contact and community. We know that we would not be here if it weren’t for the kindness of strangers and the faith of friends. That’s why we always say: We are GenQ!