Quilt Magazines 05-30-09

I don't subscribe to a lot of magazines any more - in the past there were some I hardly ever read. I'm as guilty as the next person - just look at the pictures and read the captions. Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, which started publishing forty years ago (1969), was the first general interest quilting magazine. My subscription started in 1970 and each new issue was a thrill - a whole community of quilt makers from across the country. I stopped taking it sometime in the last nine years - all those issues are carefully sorted and boxed in my garage. Some day I will haul them to the waste disposal. Now I only receive four quilting magazines - 2 that come with memberships and 2 that are subscriptions. The "SAQA Journal" has some interesting articles and information about the art quilt world, but it is basically about the Studio Art Quilt Association since it is the 'mouth' of that organization. "Quilts" is the journal of the International Quilt Assoc. which comes with the annual membership. Quilts, for me, are about the stories they tell or the experiences of the makers, so I usually read all the interviews and discussions in each issue. "Quilting Arts" is a subscription and it gets a little esoteric for me. The concentration on surface embellishment and the use of art materials is sometimes a turnoff. I'm one of those quilters who prefers commercial printed fabrics and somewhat traditional techniques. I collect art quilts, but my work is usually a bit more traditional. "Fiberarts" is on Volume #36 (presumably one per year) and five issues each year. I imagine I have subscribed to it that long. It offers photos, articles, information about people and places, but no patterns or 'how-to'. The current issue (Summer 2009) has a long article with pictures of Quilt National, plus a separate article on the "Quilt Barn Trail" which started in Ohio in 2001 and has now spread to twenty-two states with more than 2000 barns. There are also articles about the sweet grass baskets of the low country of South Carolina, beading, collage..... etc. You can review some of the articles at www.fiberarts.com I imagine that magazines have the same problems these days as newspapers. Why have a subscription when one can get almost anything on the Internet? I haven't reached the point where I carry my computer or some version of it everywhere I go, so I will continue to enjoy the printed page for some years to come.

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