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’m so excited – I’m co-hosting a blog baby shower next week for Lindy Turner (aka Crafted By Lindy)! Baby #
2 is on her way!!
