NOTIONS: Quilt Magazines-Relevant or Not?

jake • July 21, 2016 • 46 Comments

This week, our tiny q-niverse reels with news of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine’s shuttering. Owned by F+W Media, QNM was one of the longest-standing quilt-only publications in our country. Started in 1969 by Bonnie Lehman, this publication helped bring quilting back to relevance in our modern era, in a huge way.

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Since the Lehman family sold the magazine years ago, it’s had several owners, all mid-size media conglomerates specializing in hobbyist magazines, Internet shows and other related properties. It’s also had its share of editorial staff shifts. It’s hard for any magazine to survive that much change in a short period of time.

But that’s not what caused the downfall of QNM. QNM’s fatal blow is the same that most quilt magazines valiantly face today: the lack of support from our industry as a whole.

Subscriptions are wonderful and needed for a magazine’s health. Subscriptions help establish readership, which helps ascertain circulation. But today’s subscribers are so accustomed to paying deep discounts for their subscriptions that any revenue coming from subscriptions is usually a wash in terms of cost, and in some cases, is an investment on the publisher’s part to increase readership. Newsstand distribution is similar, with the publisher realizing very little–if any–profit in newsstand.

In our world, it’s print advertising that pays the bills.

Our industry’s largest companies (fabric, thread, sewing machines, etc…) have demonstrated a continued declining interest in print advertising for several years. Sometimes it’s a case of smaller marketing budgets. Other times it’s about a different philosophy about how to get a producer’s products in front of the consumer. Social media avenues are dangling the carrot, promising tons of consumer loyalty for little cost. It’s enough to make most magazine people wake up sweating at 2 a.m. Whatever the reasons, the overall message from our main supporters is that they no longer see the value in how magazines deliver their messages to our shared consumers.

Let’s stop for a moment and look at what magazines do for our industry. And yes, we’ll make it personal and use Generation Q Magazine as the example. In the 100-pages we put out quarterly, we review books and fabric collections (Cuts and Scoops), test categories of our most beloved tools (Test Drive), highlight and explain new products (Gimmes), feature cool quilt shops, write about charity efforts (Piece Corps), interview well-known and up-and-coming designers, authors and quilters in several different ways, host giveaways and contests, provide patterns (Playdates and WeSew2) and tons of inspiration to keep us and our readers yearning to sew and quilt. In almost every piece of the content we provide, we support the efforts of another person or company serving our industry. From the large fabric companies whose beautiful fabrics are highlighted in our Playdates or Cuts to that new designer releasing his or her first book and the local quilt shop owner whose store completely delighted us, we are constantly gathering, disseminating and presenting information about the newest and best our q-niverse has to offer to our readers. We do this, not because we are paid by those companies to feature them (though there are some publications that operate under this premise, blurring the line between editorial and advertising in what we consider to be an “itchy” practice), but because it meets our readers’ needs and interests.

The industry loves what we do, so they say. They highlight our articles and issues on their blogs, in their sales materials and on Facebook. They hand us out in their booths for Quilt Market and retail shows. They happily and generously send us their products with no expectation of return. They are all over us, and our competition, for editorial inclusion (reviews, giveaways, patterns, featured products and designers). But none of this love fills our biggest need. In order for any magazine to exist today, it has to be able to pay its expenses, and trust us when we tell you that our printer will not accept a fat-quarter tower as payment for their invoices, no matter how many times we ask.

If we, as quilters, consumers and/or industry professionals, value the magazines that support our q-niverse in a way that blogs and social media can’t, then we MUST support our periodicals.

Print is extremely expensive. We can tell you honestly that we pay our printer and shipper more than we pay our staff at GenQ and there’s real pain every time we write those checks. While some of our readers are turning to digital magazines, most want print. Print is permanent. It’s longevity is what overshadows social media and blogs because a magazine’s pages serve as sign posts for consumers to revisit admired products. We know this and tailor our content to be mostly timeless, to justify having us on our readers’ shelves for years to come, so there’s quite a long bang for an advertiser’s buck with us, and most magazines. We look to our advertising partners to cover our basic operating costs. As an independent start-up, we run very lean here, and don’t need much to cover an issue. Yet we, like almost every other quilt publication we watch, face a growing struggle to get advertiser support.

Sure the argument can be made about supply and demand–that maybe the readers are not supporting us either and then why should our industry? All of the magazine industry info we’ve heard over the last five years asserts that hobby magazines are one of the only stable magazine niches to exist. Hobbyists (AKA quilters) want print magazines to keep and refer back to because our content is as much a visual form of media as it is about reading. Personally, demand for GenQ has remained steady.

For now, we’re hanging on. We’re committed to bringing our brand of stitchy fun, inspiration and information to our community through print. We are looking at how we do this, though.

Coincidentally, one of our fave independent magazines, Uppercase, announced this week in its eNewsletter that it would no longer take advertising. It’s already mostly subscriber-based, with a price tag reflecting this model. This transitions Janine Vangool’s solitary effort into a completely reader-supported enterprise. Prevention Magazine, the foundational publication of Rodale Inc., made this same move in June. It’s not because they want to shun advertisers, but by becoming reader-dependent they can remain editorially independent and operationally leaner. Whether they can also be profitable as readers take on the added burden of funding their chosen magazines remains to be seen. And we’re watching, carefully and with great interest.

In the meantime we’d like to remember some other stitchy magazines that worked hard to serve our creative appetite. They include Stitch, The Quilt Life, Quilty (we’re not sure if it’s back or not), Quilter’s Home, Fresh Quilts, Fabric Trends, Quilt Magazine and Simple Quilts. We’re sure we’re forgetting some, so please feel free to share those other publications you miss in the comments below. And if you’re a magazine consumer or an industry professional, please support your favorite magazines. Because if you ignore them, they will go away.

-Jake Finch is the co-founder and publisher of Generation Q Magazine. Along with her partner in crime, Melissa Thompson Maher, and their dedicated small staff of talent extraordinaire, and an amazing community of Q-bies, they seek to take over the world with stitching fun! 

POST SCRIPT: It was suggested that we should have a link to our own advertising information here. While this article was written with a global concern for our industry, it was probably silly of us to not offer this information here. If you’re looking for information about advertising in our print, online or eNewsletter, please contact myself, jake@generationqmagazine.com and/or Melissa Kanovsky, Ad Manager, at melissa.k@generationqmagazine.com. Thank you. 

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46 Comments

  • Mary Ann • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #1

    Miniature Quilts, at least that’s the name I think it was and it folded maybe 8 -10 yrs ago. And yes you are right I do keep most of my print magazines for many yrs.

    • Patricia Hersl • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Loved that one too.

    • Marlene Clausen • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      That was the first one to come to mind for me, too. It has been gone for a very long time.

      • Siobhan • 8 years ago
        COMMENT #

        First one I thought of too! I keep many of my magazines for years…Same with books. (Didn’t AQS say they are no longer publishing books?)

  • Sarah Craig • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #2

    An interesting and well-thought out article. I feel your pain, but as a consumer, I need to get value for my money too. I have subscribed to several quilt magazines in the past, but don’t now for various reasons. In one case, I found that the patterns became repetitive and derivative, with little new to offer. In another case, their mailing program was so bad, the magazine would be on the store shelf for two weeks or more before my subscription copy arrived. As I was paying the cover price for the subscription anyway, I just started buying it locally to avoid the annoyance! I know it’s unlikely that a magazine will wow me every time I open a new issue, but with so much exciting stuff going on in the quilting universe, I look for magazines that reflect all that excitement and “newness”.

  • Penny Schmitt • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #3

    I am sorry to see Quilters Newsletter go, but to be honest, I am a long-time quilter, and though that was the first magazine I subscribed to, it was also the first I STOPPED subscribing to. Why? Because other magazines published patterns that were more exciting to me and (yeah) easier to accomplish, and published more small projects too. Quilters Newsletter always has featured and highlighted extraordinary quilts, breathtaking quilts, quilts that took the makers hundreds or even thousands of hours to accomplish. I came to think of it as the ‘impossible dream’ magazine, the magazine that humbled me by displaying the over the top, super talented, and also perhaps somewhat obsessed quilt artists of our day. While I found that interesting, I came to realize that the standard set by most of the quilters featured in the magazine was not really one I aspired to. I subscribed to many magazines, and — overwhelmed by the accumulation — went through them to select the patterns I truly dreamed of completing. Many have become realities in my hands. So exciting! I look forward to making more of those patterns over time. Frankly, after more than 15 years of immersing in my hobby, I now have so many dreams–and so many of them possible–that I don’t NEED more magazines. I look on them as great inspirations for new quilters, to help them accumulate THEIR stash of dreams. I subscribe to fewer magazines today than I did seven or ten years ago. I think its more a sign of my maturity as a quilter than anything else.

    • jmnaatz • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      I share your sentiments, but would add that when I sit down with a quilt magazine, I want to be informed by so much more. I don’t need to see so many show quilts and I sure don’t need to see anymore quilts that never seem to look different than the last one. I did enjoy Quilter’s Newsletter for the most part and will miss finding it in my mailbox. I enjoy reading and will continue with hope I can hold my favorites in my hand for a good long time.

      • Alicia Key • 8 years ago
        COMMENT #

        Me, too, JMNAATZ! One magazine arrived last week- flipped through it and done with it. Two magazines arrived Friday. Sat down to “read” last night but there’s nothing to *read* in either one! 35 yrs. ago, when I began quilting I subscribed to every thing I could find- & learned a lot. In regard to show quilts- a particular northeastern quilter claimed her “show quilts’ are what drew people to quilt shows! NOT! Over the last several days I had decided not to renew subscriptions, just let therm out.I’ve been handing out my collection of magazines to new quilters in our shop. IDK what the answer/solution is, seems our customers aren’t even interested in *books* anymore because there’s so many patterns free on the internet. Not sure what to do with those books.

  • Bobbi Penniman • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #4

    They will disappear just as the bricks quilt shops are disappearing.

    And don’t forget that other oldie but goodie in its day – Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts, a magazine almost as great as QNM was, in its heyday. I’m lucky to have every single issue of both magazines.

    • Carol Gillen • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      That’s the magazine I made my very first quilt from!

  • Maria Murphree • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #5

    I’ve heard over and over that magazines are a dying breed because of technology. It is said that people want to get their information online. This is not true for me and for many people. After staring at a screen at the office all day, the last thing I want is to do it on my time off. I subscribe to quilt magazines to nourish my spirit and give me inspiration. I read every article and advertisement multiple times. I hunger for articles about quilters, designers, the industry, techniques, products and all things related. Thank you, Generation Q, for continuing to carry the banner for our Craft.

  • Sally Johnson • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #6

    Jake,
    Such a great article and so sad to hear how the industry has dwindled in past years. I was suppose to be published years ago in The Quilt Life Magazine but it was canceled due to no longer being published. I am very lucky to be involved with a great group of people like my peeps at Gen Q!!! Woot Woot!!! One of my passions is to learn the business of being involved in the magazine word as I love to learn. I look forward to seeing you sometime. Always miss my favorite peeps at Gen Q!!!

  • Elaine Powers • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #7

    I agree with some of the statements in this article and I feel sad that print is going away because of ebooks, emails, the Internet. But I do not think I am alone in saying that one of the biggest turn offs for me in magazines is the Advertizing. I have found that if a magazine has 100 pages and 20 individual articles, they are separated by an abundance of advertisers. I subscribe to several independent magazines on a variety of interests that have zero ads. I pay more, but then I am paying for the content, not to read ads. The magazine you mentioned in your article I dropped several years ago because of the quantity of the ads. I want to read a magazine, not a publication of ads. Perhaps the magazine industry should think about this. I think if the industry ran a questionare on how people feel about this subject, they will find that women especially feel that while they want the magazines, they do NOT want to pay for an abundance of advertisers. They have neither the interest or the time to sift through the chat to get the wheat. Magazines has followed the precedence that television has set. An hour show has 20 minutes of content and 40 minutes of ads. That is what made TiVo so popular..fast forward to the show..skip the ads.

    So all you mag people out their..ask us to be loyal, yes, but give us content, not advertisers.. I will and do pay more for those types of magazines. I have dropped the ones filled with massive amounts of ads. You want my subscription, thin the ads, beef up the content, charge me more. I will be a faithful follower , I promise!

    • jake • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Thank you Elaine. I will argue on behalf of GenQ that we do NOT have a tons of ads, and those we do have often enhance the content experience by providing a look at what’s new. That’s very important to us. As an independent mom-and-mom shop, we vowed not to have huge ad/edit ratios like many of our competitors. But, we certainly struggle to meet our bare minimum needed to pay staff and expenses. I challenge you to count the ads–house ads included–in our pages and see if we’re overreaching. If you need access to a free issue of Generation Q, let me know and I’ll send you a download link. In the meantime, you will likely also see that most of our competitors ad/editorial ratios are also closing in. We count their pages, time allowing, and we know this is happening to all of us. What you really need to watch for is hidden advertising, dressed up as editorial content. That’s what I think has many readers instinctively backing off of magazines over the last couple of years. They realize the content is not neutral. 🙂 (Jake@GenerationQMagazine.coms)

      • Elaine Powers • 8 years ago
        COMMENT #

        I have read your magazine . While it is true that yours has fewer ads, and the actual content is NOT interwoven with subliminal ads, I have hesitated to subscribe because as the cost of publishing rises, I fear that you, too will be forced to fill your pages with ads, not content. I am very very picky about which publications I pay for. And like several of the comments I have read following your post, I, too, keep the magazines that I might use in the future. My comment was to give several reasons why subscriptions to magazines..all magazines..are falling and magazines are disappearing. I want to hear about new products..not from the manufacturer but from those people who have actually PURCHASED them and used them. I fear that printed material is slipping away, and digital is taking over. I shop locally, I use my local library, I support family owned businesses . And I will support those companies that publish content not ads. If that means I pay 12$ a magazine instead of 7 or 8$ to avoid repeated ads about “stuff” then I may be the elephant in the room. But I don’t think so.

        Your magazine is very good, and I enjoy it when I read it. It is innovative, and useful. But please do not blanket all magazines in the same caliber as yours.. Most quilting magazines are same o same o. I will not pay for same o same o. A shakeup in the printed material industry is needed. Maybe shrinking subscriptions will get the parent companies thinking. More Advertizing instead of good content may cover the cost of printing for a short time but in the end it will not solve the problem. A better publication will bring readers. After all, most crafters, be they quilters or some other type of crafter, pay more for top quality materials. There is a message to be had there.

  • Bill Volckening • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #8

    Thank you for the blog post. It’s true, most print magazines rely on advertising, and most advertisers are looking to spend less but get more. I was a magazine editor for ten years, and published a 52-page, bi-monthly magazine with 1/3 of the pages devoted to advertising. We didn’t rely as much on advertising since the magazine was a membership benefit for a sports organization with 50,000 members, and we received a portion of each member’s dues to cover operating costs.

    We had the luxury of setting our advertising saturation, as well as establishing reader-friendly policies regarding advertorial content and how it was presented and labeled. The advertising was all profit since the operating costs were covered by membership dues, and we had a small staff; so the magazine operated in the black from the beginning. That was kind of a different way of running a magazine, and it may be how AQS runs American Quilter. It’s also how the AARP and AAA magazines work, although they have higher advertising saturation and much higher circulation.

    It’s interesting to think about Uppercase in the context of print magazines today. It appeals to readers with diverse creative interests who appreciate the luxury of curling up with a great magazine. Subscribers pay more, receive a higher-quality product, with little or no advertising, and nobody is complaining. Maybe that’s the future of magazines…quality over quantity. Whatever the future holds, I’m ready for it and happy to contribute.

  • mary Fredrichs • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #9

    The Foundation Quilter

  • Laura Nichols • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #10

    Let me give you a different point of view, from someone who does quilting advertisement. Magazine advertising is incredibly expensive. A tiny quarter page ad cost us over $3000 to get one quilt design in front of people one time. In contrast, I can spend $300 with Facebook and get my full page ad in front of new people every single day for an entire month.

    We’ve done print advertising and we’ve done internet advertising, and by far the better return on investment has been online advertising. When you have over 400 people in a year say they found you through internet advertising (Google, Facebook, recursive advertising) and only 6 say they found you through the magazine you advertised for a year in, there’s no question where you need to spend those dollars. My local quilt store doesn’t even sell magazines anymore, because they were no longer selling, not even when marked down to 1/2 price when they were out of date.

    My husband works in the newspaper industry, and I know how print media is dying a slow, painful death. It affects me personally. But as an independent business, I can’t spend a great deal of money for an advertisement that the majority of the readers are ignoring or finding annoying, just to support another business. I have to do what’s best for mine.

    • tracy • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Laura, you would actually be quite pleased with our rates. Being a small biz ourselves, we have always tried to keep our rates affordable – even for the tiny guys! $2000 gets a full page ad and we have 1/8 page ads for $150 that come with free magazines to sell. But if you look at some of our comments (on Instagram specifically) readers point out that a large majority of quilters aren’t even online all that much. It certainly is making us take a fresh look at our target audience.

  • SusanB • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #11

    Quilters Newsletter was my first quilt magazine subscription also. And the first quilt magazine I quit getting over a decade ago. I didn’t forget or choose to not send in my renewal. I DID NOT GET even one renewal notice, much less the many renewal notices you normally receive in the 6 to 10 months before your subscription expires. My address hadn’t changed in 7 years, so no reason for them to be misdirected or lost.

    It took a couple of months for me to realize the magazine had stopped coming and the address label on my last copy showed the subscription had expired. I called the toll free number and got a customer service representative that said the magazine had new owners and stuff fell through the cracks. No apology. No acknowledgement of my distress or offer to help me get the issues I’d missed. Just a “stuff happens, so what” attitude. I declined her offer to take my renewal over the phone. It would have been the most expensive way to resubscribe.

    Ultimately, I decided the new owners didn’t deserve my business. Besides, it took me 3 months to even realize my subscription had expired, so Quilters Newsletter obviously wasn’t as important to me as it had once been.

  • Mona Kuntz • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #12

    I am in mourning. I will greatly miss QNM. I have had a subscription for this magazine for more years than i wish to count, and until I just read this news I was an active subscriber, In my own case, I love to touch and feel the magazine, to look at the pictures and projects, to tear out the pages I want to keep for much longer, and to hand off the remainder of the magazine. I like all of the quilting magazines, but I’ve shifted around in my preferences (except for QNM) based on the variety of projects each month. If I felt a magazine was getting too repetitive, I moved on to another magazine. And I checked back regularly to see if they were getting out of their rut — sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. But quilting — and any other hobby– magazines, for me, are best shown and enjoyed in print. Let’s not let the magazine industry die out entirely…. please.

  • Chris • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #13

    It appears advertisers can get more bang for their buck by giving all kinds of freebies to bloggers who mention their products. I am sad. I love my magazines and will certainly miss quilters newsletter, I’ve subscribed to it for years and years and love that it was not all patterns.

  • Kathi • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #14

    And the debate continues. Advertising pays the bills; readers want less advertising. It’s a double-edged sword.

    I spent most of my career in the advertising world (the last 10 as owner of an agency) and followed that by coming out of retirement to become Managing Editor of a quilt magazine. This article tells the tale that most publications are facing — one I understand all too well. Thank you.

  • Tracy Finnell • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #15

    Irish Quilting disappeared right after I finally sent in my subscription money. No notice of any kind.

  • Marlene Clausen • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #16

    I have been a consumer of magazines and I have written for them. I LOVE them; but, I am also very particular about what I want in a magazine. I only subscribe to one magazine at a time and give it one year (two if one year is free) to decide if I will continue to subscribe. Many magazines have come and gone from my mailbox in the years I have been quilting. I don’t mind ads if they give me a free pattern or a look at a new season’s lineup of fabric or actual content that gives me something. A magazines editorial content has to be varie:, patterns, articles about the industry (trends, designers, fabric companies, how fabric is made, printed, dyed), running features, etc. I want to sit down and READ the magazine, not page through it to see if there are patterns I like.

    My biggest peeve is when an entire issue is dedicated to the “same thing.” One magazine I used to really like, now does this all the time. Every quilt might have birds in it. Every quilt might have applique. Every quilt might be wall hangings or table runners! I am SERIOUSLY sick of bust my stash and use my scraps. I have a stash for a reason and I don’t have scraps because they go into the backs of my quilts or mug rugs or potholders or dolly quilts as I sew. I also get really tires of seeing the same quilts over and over and over. Go to almost any of the major fabric company and click on their free projects. I seem the “same” quilts, just tweeked and in a different fabric line. I know I am picky and a hard sell, but I can think of at least 50 articles I would really like to read and most likely, never will.

    • Carol Gillen • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Agreed. One thing I really liked about QNM was that there were actual articles. I love magazines as well, but have been slowly letting them expire, particularly the ones bought up by F&W. I can flip through them in 10 minutes and find nothing to save.

  • Cynthia at This Epic Journey • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #17

    I no longer subscribe to quilt magazines but rather pick them up at the library. My favorite was QNM because the quilts were different every month and I enjoyed looking at this magazine. I used to buy Quilting magazines at the grocery store or bookseller, but to be honest, only once in my years of quilting have I made a quilt I saw in a magazine. (And come to think of it it was a pattern in QNM.) Why? I don’t see any originality any longer. It’s “retreaded” patterns, for the most part, with new lines of fabrics. I see lots and lots of emphasis on the newest and the greatest fabrics and colors and very little emphasis on the pattern and ways to assist in the pattern execution (techniques, etc.). I know this is a huge generalization, but I don’t need to pay for a magazine that has a pattern I can easily google and get for free on line. I don’t know what the answer is for print magazines. I just wanted to share my motivations.

  • karenquiltsnsews • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #18

    Hmmm… want to guess how many major “industry” companies are actually private, (or public owned), for profit, “caring” businesses? The majority of the large companies are actually just sitting in venture capital portfolios, awaiting the next bigger buyer, or a profitable flip… without a future there is no “caring” about their own operations, much less any effort to “support” the industry that gave them birth… it’s a sad state of affairs in general for capitalism in the US these days. The death of print is yet another symptom of a much, much bigger problem!

  • Susie Q • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #19

    There are too many quilt magazines. This leads to bla content, repetitive content, shallow content, diluted content. Too, I have towers of quilt magazines. Most over 6 years old. I enjoy one or two very day – great visual relaxing – including the ads that some how seem more relative even to day to me as a quilter.

  • thelittlestthistle • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #20

    It’s interesting, I’ve subscribed to a good few US craft magazines of different sorts over the years and always found them far more saturated with adverts than the UK ones. I’d never actually counted before, it was really just a sense that I was paying more for a magazine half full of adverts when I got the US ones, so I actually just went and counted the last Quilt Now that dropped through the door to check my theory. I found that of 100 pages, 22 were adverts, of which 4 were for subscriptions, a 2 page spread for QN and a 2 page spread for related magazines from the same publisher (and yes, even though I appear in the magazine every month, I still pay for a subscription!)

    I wonder what it is that makes the operating models so different between the 2 countries. Our shelves are heaving with hobby magazines for everything from weddings to horses to cars to sewing, even in the supermarkets there are good sized sections devoted to magazines, so it doesn’t seem to be going away. I’m also not seeing as much of a push on online magazine subscriptions these days, so I wonder if they’ve been finding that it wasn’t as popular a medium as they imagined it might be.

    • jake • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Very interesting indeed! I don’t see a great surge to digital magazines either. We offer them and it’s mostly our overseas readers who enjoy them, because it saves on outrageous postage.

  • Lou • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #21

    2 comments, the spinning magazine Ply started out saying they would severely limit the advertising space, to have more room for articles, patterns and pictures. I thought cool and subscribed for a year. ..and then didn’t renew. Turns out I LIKE the ads. How else will I find new products, tools, colors?
    I miss Mark Lapinski’s magazine. Funny, irreverent, informative. .a lifestyle mag for quilters. LOVED it.

  • Meta Bonnell • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #22

    I subscribe to a number of quilting magazines. Quilter’s Newsletter is/was one of my favorites. I still have 4 years left on my subscription. what happens now? It would have been nice to learn about them cancelling the magazine from them instead of on another facebook page. I prefer the printed page and find myself spending less and less time on the computer because it is such a time suck. What about Quiltmaker? Is F/W media (or whatever Fons and Porter is called) going to shut that down, too?

  • karen geary • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #23

    It’s sad when we lose our quilting magazines. Unfortunately, the content of Quilters Newsletter was not the same quality after each succesive sale of the magazine. I let my subscription lapse years ago. Same with the AQS magazine. It has not kept up with the quality standards they used to have. There are lots of quilt magazines and the audience is ever evolving. It’s a hard business to keep up with and change. But change is important to stay fresh and relevant.

  • Edith • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #24

    I am newish to quilting and I very much enjoyed QN. I got it digitally and I will miss it. And I already get Quilting Arts so I will probably have to untangle that once things end. I like the fact that they have articles about quilters, shows, tools etc as opposed to only having patterns. I quickly stopped getting magazines with patterns since I had more than I would ever need and I enjoy designing my own quilts. I don’t mind advertising at all since frankly its the way I hear about a lot of things like quilt travel, schools, and specialty retailers. I think QN had a good niche between Quilting Arts and something like Fons & Porter. Also they didn’t concentrate on one particular style of quilting. I also liked Quilter’s Home for its short life for similar reasons. My stash reflects the fact that I like most types of fabrics and styles and that I don’t want to be hemmed into one style. I guess I’ll buy magazines similarly in the future, based on whether a particular issue looks interesting.

  • Sheila Stewart • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #25

    I agree with many of the points already made. Another factor I feel that affects the support of quilting magazines is the demographic of quilters in general. Many of us are 65+ and we have enough fabric, patterns, ideas and UFO’s to last us another lifetime. My friends are into decluttering and downsizing, not the acquisition mode we rode for so many years. Most have cancelled subscriptions to magazines they have read for years to avoid more “stuff” to get rid of down the line. I attend all the big quilt shows, primarily to visit the vendors with hopes for. finding something new. I spend more money on my hobby than on other spending categories reported by my credit card statement, but speaking for myself, I don’t find much out there that I do not already have. At the same time our generation has not embraced digital magazine format either. What we need is a wave of new interest and new bodies in quilting.
    Hopefully the Modern quilt movement will pull younger quilters into the fold and that in turn will fill the coffers again.
    I will look for Gen-Q next time I hit the newsstand. thank you for this discussion!

    • jake • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Hi Sheila: And your thoughts are exactly what we’ve echoed in the post after this one! It’s hard to fathom, but there does reach a point where you can only have so much fabric. Many of my friends are also trying to downsize their stash. And look for us in Joann’s and Barnes & Noble and we sell single issues and subs on this site as well.

    • janetamarney • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Thank you for an interesting post and discussion! I began quilting in 1979, and at that time I read every book on quilting in my local library (maybe 10-15 books), and I eagerly awaited every issue of QNM. Now there are way too many books and magazines out there, and many of them are just the same old thing, often geared toward beginners. Most of the “new” patterns in magazines today are just classic traditional patterns made with newer fabric lines – boring! Been there, done that, taught that. I prefer to design my own quilts, so I have no need for more patterns. I have an entire room full of beautiful fabric and a well-organized personal library of quilting books and magazines, but the family says I need to downsize. At age 59, I have many more ideas for quilts than years left to make them. What I need now is two-fold: inspiration (photos of the top quality quilts in each genre) and information about current events in the world of quilting (shows, museum exhibits, who’s who, etc.). QNM provided both.

      • Rose in VT • 8 years ago
        COMMENT #

        Janet: Your comment expresses well my own thoughts on this issue, thanks for wording it so well!
        There is so much going on in the quilting world, and it’s all exciting but when there’s too much out there, maybe we’re going to see some occasional resets. Wish my own personal library was as
        well organized as yours – I have stacks everywhere.

  • Karen • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #26

    I’m always sorry to hear about the end of a long running magazine. but I will say that I prefer quilting magazines with lots of articles and not just patterns. GenQ is one of my favorites because of this. My other favorite magazine is Piecework which also has lots of articles with a historical focus. So basically, please keep up the good work with the articles. I enjoy the patterns but I really like learning new things or learning about things through the articles.

  • kathy Booth • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #27

    I LOVED Quilt magazine! And I became a quilter, then got into bags and purses, and now quilting again, doing each one as I feel inspired. In 4 short years I have accumulated over 2500 yards of fabrics. My husband gladly built me a whole wall of shelves, 8 foot high by 14 feet wide, so that I could see all my fabric in hopes of using it instead of the obsessive purchasing. Oh…this does not include kits and precuts I have in totes. I keep ALL my magazines by the way. I like print and actually work for a publisher for a niche market of visitor guides and chamber directories, but it is not getting any easier to sell print advertising in this market, for the same reasons you’ve accurately pointed out in other posts. Our company includes the digital version of the publication as well as a mobile app to help keep the advertising coming in, and to appeal to an audience that prefers this type of media. I had inheritance dollars to use, and use it I did to buy a Handi-Quilter longarm, Babylock serger, Bernina 630, Babylock Ellisimo Gold, and another Babylock Grace. Plus an awesome Koala sewing cabinet that will hold my bernina or Ellisimo. Guess what? the money tree has died and I just have to stop buying fabric. I am getting closer to retirement and hope I can actually use all the fabric I have before I die. Seriously. My family says I should sell my fabric. What? Are they nuts?!!! I bought it because I LOVE it! But the hoarding has stopped. I still purchase beautiful fabrics, and I am in the modern quilt stuff, never cared for traditional or civial war stuff. But my purchases are rare and I make myself ask, “what will I create?” And I make myself be very specific: which purse? which quilt? That way I buy exactly what I need. Period. If I can’t come up with something in my head fairly quickly, I pass it up. Instead of, “gotta have some, don’t know when I’ll use it, but I love it.” Just can’t afford it anymore, dollars or time-wise.

    I have not heard of your magazine, Gen-Q! I will look for it!

    • kathy Booth • 8 years ago
      COMMENT #

      Just went to you website and purchased a couple back issues. Awesome!

  • Polly • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #28

    I subscribe to a variety of quilting magazines. But, I spend more time looking at the ads than the articles. I don’t care about the patterns. Invariably, they are things I would never make. There is no shortage of ideas for new patterns, or even new twists on old patterns. When I go to my mailbox, I’m looking for new techniques, tips to improve my precision, new tools, and products, etc. All too often, the content of the magazine is simply patterns, it’s in the advertising where I find the most benefit.

  • Michele Blake • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #29

    Thank You for this info. It’s sad that QNM is ceasing publication; it was the first quilting magazine I subscribed to. It was also the first I let lapse after subscribing for many years. I let it lapse about a year after it shifted from 10 issues per year to 6 issues per year. The Editor’s page was that readers were complaining they could not finish reading an issue before the new issue arrived! I found that suspect because I had no problem finishing it in a week or less. Shortly after they started advertising with inserts in the center of the magazine for a clothing company that was dowdy, unattractive and overpriced for the quality. I had found that the page count was dwindling as well. I really loved QNM because when I first started quilting it offered me visual inspiration, great articles, profiles of interesting quilters, tips and tricks and all those quilt show listings!. The ending of my subscription coincided with the developing online quilting community that was emerging. I didn’t have to wait a month or more for new content. In addition I could get donated magazines at the free table at my quilt guild.
    I moved last year and bundled all my quilting magazines into batches by publication name and publication year. I had QNM magazines from 1993 to 2008!! I also had issues of QuiItmaker, American Quilter/AQS, American Patchwork and Quilting and Quilting Arts. I advertised them on Craigslist for free and I had a new quilter come and get all of them. I was happy to see them go to domeone who would enjoy them. I have only read one or two issues of Generation Q magazine, but you make a great point to view it again. Next time I am in a store and see it on the stands, I will pick it up.

  • Chris Wells • 8 years ago
    COMMENT #30

    I received 4 quilt magazines subscriptions each year for many years. I finally started to drop them when QNM changed their ownership and it all changed. The other thing I get irritated with is the issue over copyrighting these patterns. How many patterns can be copyrighted with a different name and colorway, but be the same as the quilt was from the month before. How many patterns can come from circle, triangles, rectangles and squares and then copyright them. Use a paper and pencil and be creative. If the magazines had articles and also history articles or new patterns I would be right in line to order them.

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