Thanks to the 65 folks who took my survey last week! It was really interesting! I love that I get input from my readers, it truly is true; blogging is about building a community. Suzanne Cabrera from the blog “an open [sketch]book” wrote about this Monday and came up with a genius graphic that describes a way to use a blog to build community:

You should definitely go see what she had to say in her post, as well as the comments – there are several excellent ones!

I was thinking about building a community when I designed that short survey for folks to take last week. Now that I’ve got a bunch of answers (65) I thought I’d share my results from the survey with you:

Lots and lots of you are quilters and sewists! That’s what I thought, but I wanted to make sure The neat thing is that so many of you clicked “other” and elaborated on what you make. More than a few of you are knitters, fabric surface designers and jewelry designers (doh! Of course – I don’t know why I didn’t include those in the choices), but there were a couple of cool others: stained glass, weaver, pattern writer, industrial designer, kumihimoist (Japanese braider) – Japanese Braiding? How interesting! I’ve never heard of that term before!

I see I’ve got a nice mix of readers – some who’ve been with me for a long time, and some who haven’t. It’s nice to see that I’m gaining more readers, and it also is a nice reminder for me that sometimes, someone is reading a particular post and it’s the 1st time they’ve dropped by. Which means I may start adding a sentence or two to re-confirm some basics of my work in a post that may seem like old hat you long time readers, but may be helpful for the newbies.

For example: Every time I post a new bag I get a question in the comments about what fabric I’m using. The answer: Cotton Duck (a type of canvas) that I’ve dyed!

Good to know. I subscribe to my blog in Google Reader so I can see how the posts format in a reader. Some kinds of formatting don’t come through in a reader, which can make for confusing reading. You may have noticed that I’ve started posting pictures in a larger collage -> although it’s one larger file to download, it allows me to have pictures included the way I want them to in the reader. I’ll continue to dink around with this so that posts look good both on the site and in a reader!

Yay! The things most people like to see are my art and my process! Since that is one of my main missions here, I’m glad to see that it’s what you’d like to see. And big surprise, most people want to see more tutorials. I was pretty sure you would, but again, nice to know. I also got some nice comments, like:

I enjoy looking at and reading about an artist’s creative endeavors. I also enjoy little tidbits about one’s personal lives. It’s nice to know that we can all relate with family, life, etc. as well as art and creating.

I love seeing the finished products in, on, or with their new “home”. It really shows off your work!

Your photos are gorgeous.

Your incredibly positive attitude and energy

i like everything! your blog is so well rounded that it’s always interesting to read

Also, a few of you wrote something very similar:

it’s your blog to put whatever you want on it – please don’t let anyone stop you from keeping it “you”

Again, thank you for that! You are right – this space is ultimately mine, I can do what I want with it. One of my goals is to give back to the blog-o-sphere, and help others learn about things that I do, just like I learned from other folks. Right now I’m struggling to find enough time to get everything I want to do done (who isn’t?). Any post takes time to write, and some of the posts I write are more for you than for me, so I needed to make sure they were wanted! But, for the most part, I learn just as much (or MORE) about myself and my process as you do, which is an amazing side effect of blogging.

So, if you‘ve stuck with me to the end of this post, I’ll just close by saying THANKS! Thanks for being here, answering my questions, sending me some awesome comments, and in general making me love my art all the more.

Okay, I’m ready to post this and I see that I haven’t labeled the axes in the graphs! ARGH! I’m gonna let it go, cause I’m thinking you’ll get the drift, but for those people who will notice this I apologize! If this were a lab report I were grading, I’d take 4 points off!

I have really been thinking about blogging lately. One of my New Year’s “Inclinations” is to communicate my art. I’ve found it incredibly useful to blog about the how, what, and why I make what I make. I am finding that the more I blog about what I do,  the more I understand why. What drew me into blogs in the first place was my quest for understanding WHY artists did what they did. It excites me no end that I have found a path to understanding creation right here in this screen!

As I continue to try to make this blog a place of beauty and interestingness, I find myself wondering about you, dear reader. A lot of you don’t comment, and some of those who DO comment don’t have blogs for me to visit, so I don’t know who you are. So, I would love it if you could take a minute and answer 6 questions that will help me get a handle on who you are, what interests you here, and if there’s anything you’d like to see more of

Click here to take my 6 question, 1 minute survey

Thanks so much for clicking over – I can’t wait to see what you all think!

(Dear Lord, please let someone take this survey so I don’t feel like a total dork).

And because no post is complete without a picture, here’s one of me in my studio!

Waaaaay down at the bottom of my long term goals I wrote for myself for this year is getting published in a magazine (which is a big step towards one pie-in-the-sky goal of getting a book published – someday) . When I think about it, it’s kind of weird, the way that one definition of success in both the art quilt world  and the science world (my day job) is publication. In both cases, publication is a way to share your ideas with lots of people who have similar interests, and it is very validating to be chosen by your peers!

When I started blogging a year and a half ago, I remember actually having a conversation with myself – and deciding that I would NOT be one of those bloggers who works to get published in print – partly because I didn’t know what I would have to show the world! A year and a half, I’ve got a few ideas totally formulated, and plenty more in the simmering stage. I ‘m kind of amazed at that! Anyway, I don’t want to go into great detail, so I don’t jinx anything, but   I sent one submission out last week, and I just pushed send on the emails for two more proposals today!

Wish me luck!

Photo Source: Celeste Schwartz, Flickr