Can you help Fabricate?

Hello from another Kerry! Kerry has very kindly granted me a guest post today to tell you about my modern quilting magazine project, Fabricate.

Fabricate is set to be a monthly magazine for modern quilters here in the UK. We haven’t really got a magazine tuned into contemporary trends for patchworkers for reasons I can’t really go into too much, so I decided to take the bull by the horns and try to do something about it!

I know a magazine is hard work- I used to be the editor of one. I graduated in Publishing a few years ago, before I had ever expressed an interest in quilting myself, however I’ve been crafting since I was very small. Nowadays you can find me at the PennyDog Patchwork blog where that’s pretty much all I do now. I love quilting and I know there’s a lot of us in the UK who do too- 33,000 people attended the Festival of Quilts last year alone and I'm pretty sure we’re not all traditionally minded.

The reason I'm appealing to you now is that I need to raise £5000- or $8200 including fees- before the end of December in order to rent shelf space with WHSmiths and make the project worthwhile. If I can’t fund this then it can’t be a reality. It’s a really rubbish time of year to try but to get my launch date of 21st March which will hit the Sewing for Pleasure show and also the Easter weekend when craft magazine sales are at their highest, it needs to be done now. I have a meeting with my distributor on 20th December so it would be great to be able to give them a definite answer by then!

So if you have $1 spare (about 65p) then it would be very welcome, however I am offering early subscriptions, one off copies by post and even advance advertising at reduced rates just to try and hit this target. Can you help? Please tell your friends and keep up with the progress at http://www.indiegogo.com/fabricate

Would you like a free project? I've got a file over on the Indiegogo page for the above clock project, or you can put your email address in on www.fabricatemag.co.uk and I will email it over to you.

Have a great Christmas!

Modesty

Maybe it is been British but it feels a little embarrassing to pat myself on the back sometimes and blog about this but I have just been published in a British quilting magazine, the sort of magazine that you can actually go into WHSmith and buy.  My granny will be thrilled.  And that is Julianna's quilt and pattern you can see on the cover!

Modern Quilting has had a chequered history recently, you can read about that here so I was surprised that this issue did actually get published.  There have been a lot of ins and outs with this company and I am familiar to their ups and downs in the early days of Sew-Hip magazine so I went into an invitation for an interview and to write a pattern with my eyes wide open and to be honest, just hoping for a bit of publicity for Sew-Ichigo.  All the people I dealt with, both in this issue and previously have been courteous and straightforward and I am guessing many lost their jobs between issue 2 and 3 as ownership altered.  The new editor Jenn has been working flat out and this must have been a difficult issue to deliver but she did it and I am delighted with the interview and photos.

Seeing my name in large letters across the page was a slightly surreal moment- I had Lula and Damian with me at the time and I was carrying the bag you can see on the right in the magazine.  

I sent a few pics to show Penny, she congratulated me on my wise words on 'narrative quilting'- don't remember that I thought, and besides I am not really sure what narrative quilting is.  Turns out that a little of the previous feature must have migrated to the start of my interview!  I guess that reflects that hard time all at Modern Quilting has picking up a set of articles from the previous team and having to start afresh.  It is a great issue, lots to read and make- quilts,  English paper piecing, Joel Dewberry interview and of course Narrative Quilts.  My table runner pattern is in next months issue, so another bashful post is to come.  So I will quietly blow my trumpet and run away a little embarrassed by it all!