Sew-Sew Divine: This Quilting Guy Leaves His Readers In Stitches

Since then, Quilter's Home has gone where no other quilting mags have dared to go. There was the story called "Quilt Better With Wine." ("Pop the cork, baby, and quilt guilt free!") And a gallery of tattoos for quilters. And an article called "Crop Circles: Cosmic quilting from the stars?"

Another article suggested snappy answers to stupid questions about quilting. For example, when somebody says, "You quilt? Are you Amish?" you can answer, "Yes, exactly. I'm Amish. Just ignore my car, the buttons on my shirt and highlights in my hair, and my feather-boa mules. I have special permission from the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce to have them."

Probably the most famous piece printed thus far was "Is He Cheating While You're Quilting?" It offered typical women's-mag advice -- "Don't waste your time and energy on the other woman" -- along with a quilt-related twist: "I'll bet the hag doesn't even quilt!"

That piece inspired some amazing letters to the editor: "Do you wonder why he might be looking somewhere else?" asked one. "Duh! Have you seen your thighs lately? Not unless you have to, right?"

But what makes the magazine work is Lipinski's chatty, catty voice. He writes like he's talking to his readers on the phone, addressing them with such endearments as "honey," "cupcake," "pussycats" and "dudettes." And he likes to make fun of himself, particularly his weight and his addiction to buying quilting fabrics that he'll never get around to using: "Look, if I could lose weight as fast as I can spend money on fabric, I'd be one of the friggin' Olsen twins!"

This year, Dave O'Neil of CK Media, which publishes Quilter's Home and four other quilting magazines, suggested that Lipinski put his picture on the cover of every issue, like Oprah does.

"I was scared to death," Lipinski recalls. "Everybody was scared to death. Our circulation department said putting a guy's face on the cover would kill the magazine."

But it worked and circulation actually went up with Lipinski's goateed mug on the cover. CK Media now prints 100,000 copies of each bimonthly issue. And this month, the company began offering subscriptions -- a sign that the magazine is here to stay.

At this point, the key question is: How long can Lipinski keep coming up with quirky, funny stuff about quilting?

"I haven't even scratched the surface yet," he says. "Sometimes I wish it was a 400-page magazine so I could keep on writing. I can go on forever."