“I think you should stop working now. RIGHT NOW.”

Welcome to your holiday weekend! (Well, if you’re in the U.S., that is, and you don’t happen to be a self-employed workaholic person. Ahem.) Here are my favorite links of this week…

Triangle Log Cabin Pin Cushion, from In Color Order

I loved meeting Jeni Baker in person at Quilt Market last weekend! This is one of my favorite how-to’s of hers. I want a triangle log cabin quilt. Who has time to make me one? Anyone?… Anyone?

An Ordinarily Extraordinary Blanket, from Dottie Angel

I was first drawn to this how-to because of the vintage doilies stitched to it. But then I discovered that the best part is really Tif’s construction. She made the blanket in broad rows, switching colors to create the squares. She then joined each new row as she made it. And all of that’s documented with great photos.

Cardboard Tool Holder, from The Cardboard Collective

Amber’s always making amazing things from corrugated. She needed a safe place to stow her sharp craft tools and keep them away from curious little hands, so she made this caddy. Bonus points for making such creative use of cardboard scraps as the filler!

Creating a Repeating Design on Paper, from Daisy Janie

If you’ve always wanted to make some Spoonflower fabric, but weren’t sure about the computer design part, take a look at Jan’s tutorial. She creates a beautiful repeating design the low-tech way, with paper. Her process teaches you a lot about how repeats work.

A Quilted Yurt Classroom

Lastly, I’ll share this cool Kickstarter you might want to support. Ruth Haske founded a forest preschool, and hopes to construct a beautiful quilt-covered yurt for the children to use as a play space. From her page:

“It started out as a forest playgroup meeting in the beautiful parks of Charlottesville, VA.  With the purchase of three beautiful, forested acres just outside of town we now have a more permanent place to meet. We are now a forest preschool where we play, explore, build, grow, roam, dig, climb and run. We have a creek to wade, an organic garden to water, plants and animals to study and big rocks to climb. But sometimes we also want to slow down and come together as a group to read, chat, create or rest.  We want to build a purposeful space for the group and allow the children to develop a sense of ownership of this space.”

Neat, huh? Wish I could go back in time and attend this preschool!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Image by KyleWiTh, via Flickr

I don’t think this is any big secret at this point: in may ways, the act of communicating through blog comments has largely given way to the more nimble conversations happening in social media spaces. That’s not to say that blogs are over! After all, blog posts are a big chunk of what gets shared in social media spaces.

…But nowadays, it’s safe to say that a good chunk of your blog readers are likely coming to you through various social media channels.

Are these social media-based readers of equal value to you? Nope. And if you know where to look in your Google Analytics, you can find out more about just how much actual attention you’re getting from them.

How do you do that? Here’s a quick little video to walk you through:

So, why does stickiness matter?

The stickier the traffic is from a particular source, the more valuable that source is.

People coming to my blog through Twitter, for example, hang around here three times as long as those who pop in from Pinterest. And the longer you can get any reader to stick around, the better chance you have of enticing them to look at the things you want them to see most – your online store, for example, or your “Hire Me” page.

Image by Pewari, via Flickr

These stickiness numbers also give you some valuable insights into how you might be using social media more effectively…

• Which social media site sends you the stickiest traffic? Is this a site where you’re spending time conversing with people? If not, maybe it should be.

• Which social media site sends you the least sticky traffic? How might you entice people coming in through this channel to stick around a little longer, and look at even one more thing that might interest them?

• Does the amount of time you spend on a particular social media channel relate to the stickiness of the traffic it sends your way?

Image by katielips, via Flickr

…And of course, the value of stickiness also depends on how you might want to monetize your blog. If you’re monetizing with ads, then stickiness isn’t all that important – all you really need is for lots of people to show up and register as traffic, period. If you monetize by selling a product or service, however, then you need more focused attention from your readers, so you can get that message through.

If you found this bit of data-sleuthing interesting, do check out my self-guided Google Analytics course. In just two weeks, you can be quite the Analytics ninja – and learn a ton about how to make your blog more effective. Or, if you’re not the data type, you can always hire me to analyze your numbers for you.

Now let’s talk: which social media site turned out to be your stickiest source of blog traffic?

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Hey, Gang – mark your calendars, won’t you, for Wednesday, May 29th, 1:00 pm PST. I’ll be broadcasting live right here with Jennifer Forest, author of Jane Austen’s Sewing Box, Crafty Girls Talk, and her newest, Work Women Want. (Among others!)

Jen and I will be talking about her experiences writing and publishing books – both those that she wanted to write, and those her audience wanted her to write. How is the creative process different when you’re taking its audience into account? How does the work of production feel different? What’s the difference in sales?

Just pop over here at the appointed day and time to watch what should be a great discussion.

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Yee-Haw! I gotta declare the first Plastic Canvas Blog Hop a smashing success. Every participant came up with something super cool, and I think that collectively, we showed off a lot of things this humble medium can do. (See pictures and links at the bottom of this post.)

…And here I am, closing things out with this wall art project, which has been rolling around in my head for a long time.

First, I took six sheets of 7-count canvas and trim them to 9 ¾” squares. Then I busted out my stash of Sugar ‘n Cream yarn. I’ve written before about how much I love using this stuff for PC. It’s cotton, so it has no stretch and a smooth finish. It provides very even coverage on the canvas, and the colors are yummy.

I used tent stitch to fill the canvases, which, I won’t lie to you, required many hours of Arrested Development. And West Wing. And Mad Men. (If you’d like this process to go faster, I recommend trying some of the stitches in Mom’s tutorial – they cover the canvas much faster and would look really cool in this context!)

I didn’t really plan the stitch design, other than to select five overall colors. I just started at the outside edge of each canvas and stitched in a spiral until I hit the center, changing colors when it felt right.

A Few PC Tippy-Tips:

If you need to change colors, here’s how: leave a tail of the old color laying against the back of the canvas. Start the new color, and leave a tail of it, too. Then, begin stitching with the new color, making sure to catch those two tails in your stitches at the back.

(Actually, this technique works any time you need to end one strand and start a fresh one.)

I recommend orienting your stitches so you’re always passing your needle down through the hole where the previous row of stitches is. That keeps you from kicking up fluff on the surface of your work as you pull the yarn through.

The main thing to watch out for when you’re doing PC work is this – when your yarn starts twisting up, all kinds of bad things can happen. This is when knots form. Twisted yarn also bunches up on itself, so you have to pull it harder to get it through the canvas. And that, in turn, beats the crap out of your yarn, so that by the end of the strand, it’s all fuzzy and pilled-up.

Any time you notice your yarn doing this twisty thing as it’s hanging from your work, take one second and twirl your needle in the opposite direction until the twist falls out. Problem solved!

Here’s my favorite part of the whole project – I was looking around for some mechanism to connect all the canvases into a single wall hanging when I found these colored paper clips. All they needed was a little modification.

I used wire cutters to cut away the inside bend. That left me with an elongated ring that was a little wider at one end.

I slid the clip, then, through two canvases, placing the cut end toward the back. (And I made sure I was using holes in the same spot on each canvas, so things would hang straight.)

Then, to tidy things up in the back, I just used a little tab of clear tape to hold the two ends together. I placed clips in all the locations you see here – at each of the adjoining corners.

I used little brad-type nails for hanging, because they have no heads and can hide in the canvas easily. You’ll need one for the center of each of the three topmost panels. I just measured down from the ceiling to make sure they were all at the exact same height.

Check out what the other blog hop participants made!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Image by Pahz, via Flickr

So you have this audience, and you want to know more about who they are and what they want. One popular way to find out is to post some kind of survey on your blog. (Google Drive has a free, super-dandy survey-building tool.)

Reader surveys can be very useful, but it’s also pretty easy for a survey to go off its rails and create misleading data. There are lots of good resources out there on how to write effective survey questions, so I won’t retread that ground.

Instead, today I’d like to talk about what a survey can actually tell you about your readers, and what it can’t – especially in the context of a creative blog.

Image by Auntie P, via Flickr

First, the concrete, measurable stuff:

Above all, surveys do a terrific job of revealing how your readers interact with your content. Like, for example:

• How often your readers visit your blog
• What social media tools they use
• How they’re getting your blog delivered to them
• Whether people are following you in one online place or many

Questions like these have black-and-white kinds of answers, and they’re easy for most people to answer honestly. You can do a lot with this kind of data! If you know where and how people are reading your stuff, then you have a clearer picture of which social media tools might be most worth your time.

If you know how often people read you, then maybe you can get away with posting less often, or maybe you need to give people more advance notice of events like sales or classes. If you know that the same people are following you on multiple channels, you can do a better job of making your blog and social media content complement one another.

Image by Jill Clardy, via Flickr

What about demographics?

When I was at CRAFT, reader surveys always included demographic questions because that’s data they needed to sell to advertisers. If your blog’s business model doesn’t include selling ads, then maybe you don’t even need this information.

Here are some basic demographic questions:

• What age range are your readers?
• Are they married? Single? With or without kids? What about pets?
• What level of education do they have?
• What occupations do they have?
• What level of income do they make?

Demographic questions like these might give you a clearer overall picture of who’s reading, and that might help you formulate content for your blog, but it should be said: to get reliable demographic data, you need a whole lot of respondents to your survey. If only a small group responds, then the data you get will be significantly skewed – after all, it only represents those who responded; not your whole readership.

One other note on the income-range question: I’ve seen a lot of bloggers ask for this information as a way of finding out whether readers have “enough money” to spend on their product or service.

Sorry, no – your readers’ income range tells you absolutely nothing about their actual intent to buy your stuff. I’ll talk more about this in a moment.

Image by Dhoomakethu!!, via Flickr

Now, the opinion-level stuff (that’s trickier):

Surveys can also help you get a little insight into your readers’ opinions – although opinion questions have to be handled carefully. Here are some things you can learn fairly reliably from surveying:

• Which of your blog’s topics your readers like best (and least)
• Whether your readers prefer an RSS feed that shows post excerpts or full posts
• Whether your readers are finding it easy or difficult to navigate around your blog
• Whether they’ve actually made a project from one of your tutorials
• Whether they found your tutorial easy or difficult to follow

This list is pretty black-and-white, yes-or-no, either-or. And again, this allows people to answer your questions factually and unemotionally. You can use the data from questions like these to help you formulate future editorial plans, and to make design adjustments so your blog is easier to read, and to improve the quality of your tutorials.

Image by imjustkimmie, via Flickr

…But here’s where opinion questions can go off the rails: when you’re trying to use them to predict how your readers will behave, or how they’ll react emotionally. Like, for example:

• Will your readers spend money in your new online store?
• Will they will get mad if you place ads on your blog?
• Will they be okay with you changing the direction of your blog?
• Will they buy this particular product you want to release?

Now, a professional survey-writer might be able to elicit reasonable responses to these questions. But a professional surveyer is an anonymous party. When you survey your readers, they know it’s you who’s asking these questions. So of course, they’ll tend to answer questions like these in the nicest ways possible. We’re a nice community, after all.

The problem there is, what you’ll usually end up with is an indication of your readers’ niceness, not their actual feelings or intent to buy.

Image by Sam Howzit, via Flickr

It’s very tempting, when you’re newly taking a blog in a business direction, to gravitate toward using a survey to ask permission to do that. (I’ve done this myself, more than once.) Of course you don’t want to annoy your hard-won audience! Of course you want to do what makes them happy.

But let me say this very gently: business decisions like these are not your readers’ to make. They’re yours. You can’t control whether your readers will be happy about you doing some business with your blog. What you can control is whether your products and services are of great quality, and whether you’re marketing them to the right audience. (Some analysis of your blog stats would really help with that second part.)

So let’s talk: have you ever surveyed your readers? What did you learn from that process? How would you do it differently next time?

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

This one’s for denizens of PDX… I’m getting ready to teach a couple real, live craft classes, and you’re most welcome to join me.

First up, I’ll be at the lovely Modern Domestic on Saturday, May 25th, teaching an intro to English Paper Piecing. We’ll be making hexie mug rugs like you see above, and along the way we’ll learn a lot of handy tricks for cutting fabrics, basting patches, hand-stitching, and finishing. My whole goal here is to get you as addicted to this technique as I am. Mwahahaha.

You can register for this class right over here.

…And then I’ll be at Fabric Depot on Sunday, May 26th, teaching a Kanzashi Butterflies class. (Aren’t these cute?!) They make lovely brooches and picks for flower arrangements, or you can use them on bags, quilts, etc. We’ll also cover a couple other styles of body/antenna. This class comes with a supply kit.

Register for this one by calling Fabric Depot at 888-896-1478.

Hope to see you there, locals!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

As always, you can mouse over any of her images to get a little more insight into why she chose it. Enjoy!




What are you thinking about most in your creative life these days?

 
What colors show up again and again in your work?

 
 
Show us your favorite texture from your work.

 
What is the most organized part of your stash right now?

   
What is one of your creative goals for 2013?

 
If you had one creative wish for everyone, what would it be?

 
Any advice on keeping creativity flowing, even when life gets busy?

Would you like to be a guest in this series? Email me!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Wait, it’s Friday already? What the heck did I do all this week? OK, well, it can’t be helped now. Let’s do some Link Love! Today’s links are all of the playful variety.

Hama Bead Weaving, from Mini-eco

I’m still all intrigued about perler/hama beads, and loving this bead-fabric Kate made. The bead shapes lend themselves nicely to all kinds of patterns.

Space Invaders Magnets, by sasasvati on Craftster

Oh, I have such huge respect for this magnet set. Sasasvati needlepointed every single part of a Space Invaders game screen – 56 pieces in total! It’s made on needlepoint canvas, but would also be a perfect job for 14-count plastic canvas. Ahem.

Fun Fringe Tote, from Brit + Co.

Since I always fondle the fringe when I visit fabric stores, I’m digging this decidedly festive tote. Even better, it’s made on one of those logo-printed canvas totes we all seem to accumulate.

Shoe Box Doll House, from My Poppet

My inner little girl is losing her mind over this idea. Cinti took a shoe box, and used magazine cut-outs to decorate the interior. How genius is this? Instant dollhouse!

Glittered Animal Canvases, from Papery and Cakery

All I’m saying is, any project in which you cover small animal figurines in glitter is a project I want to do.

Enjoy your weekend!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

I’m excited to report that the quilt I’m making for the release of our new book has reached the quilting stage!

I’ve never undertaken a hand-quilting project this large, so I disobeyed the conventional rules and started at the outer edges, in hopes of hiding my worst wonk there while I get comfortable with the mechanics of the process.

(As in, stitch toward yourself, use one of these dandy Protect & Grip Thimbles, and draw quilting lines for yourself to follow.)

For a brief moment of crazytime, I thought I’d just machine-quilt the thing, but GAH!! ACK!! PTTTHHHHHHPP!! I hated how this looked. Too hard-lined. Not to mention, in my tiny sewing space, manuvering a full-size quilt in my machine would have been nightmarish.

The hand stitches are much more fluid, and use this blue thread I got married to in my mind to much better effect. Doncha think?

So, the principal quilting problem I’m having right now is one of access. Pushkin loooooves this quilt. Every time I get it out to work on it, he’s on my lap, settling in within seconds. It’s folded up on my craft table right now, and he’s passed out on it, snoring lustily.

K says, “Just move him; he’ll understand the message.” Yeah, like that’s happening. Since the title of the book is Quilting Happiness, I’ve decided that even if it takes me five more years to quilt this thing, it’s clear that it’ll deliver a whole lot of feline happiness in the meantime.

…All of which reminds me that if perchance you don’t have enough pictures of this cat in your life, I’m now on Instagram, sharing even more of them! Look me up at “craftypod.”

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Image by Judy **, via Flickr

Today, I want to talk about your numbers. How many monthly unique visitors do you get on your blog? How many Twitter followers do you have? How many Facebook Likes? How many subscribers for your email newsletter? How many times have your tutorials been pinned?

I think we all like to watch our numbers, cheering when they go up, worrying when they go down.

But are these numbers really any indicator of how much focused attention we’re getting online? Nope.

If you look more closely at your numbers, you start to realize that they contain a healthy percentage of illusion. Of the number of blog subscribers you have, a group of them hasn’t actually looked at their RSS Reader in months. A chunk of your Twitter followers gave up on Twitter a long time ago.

Am I saying that everyone’s numbers are bogus? No, not exactly. I’m saying that your biggest numbers can’t tell you much. Different kinds of websites (and businesses) need different kinds of metrics to read their health. So it’s never a bad idea to let go of your worry over the big numbers, and look for the ones that have an actual story to tell you.

Image by Stewf, via Flickr

Wait, What? Of course the numbers matter!

OK, you’re right – there are a few cases where those broad numbers I mentioned above are useful. Such as: if you want to sell ads on your blog, or work with companies on sponsored content, or get a book deal. When I work with craft-industry or publishing companies, they usually want to know my unique monthly blog visitors, Facebook page Likes and Twitter followers. Companies generally like to think in mass-market ways, so the broad numbers, to them, indicate the potential attention value I bring to the table.

For most other kinds of creative businesses, however, I think you need to look past these broad numbers and get to the smaller data that reveals actual human behavior (or, in keeping with this month’s theme, your actual audience). So what are some productive ways you can look at your numbers?

Image by leslie.keating, via Flickr

Some good numbers for a product business…

Let’s say you have handmade goods to market. What subset of your numbers might you keep an eye on then?

• Well, how many people are actually clicking that sidebar link to your online store? (That’s something you can track in Google Analytics.)

• How many people are following the links to your stuff that you in post social media spaces? (That’s something you can track with the paid version of HootSuite, or Tweetburner, or a link shortener like Ow.ly.)

• You can also try sprinkling strategic links to your online store into specific related posts on your blog, and measuring how many people end up clicking. (That’s another Google Analytics trick.)

• And then, you can compare the overall traffic to your online store with your monthly sales.

Image by eric.schnell, via Flickr

See what I mean? None of those metrics have much to do with your overall numbers, but this data tells you way more about the health of your business.

And what about Pinterest for this kind of business? Are people pinning your product images because they’re excited about buying, or because they intend to DIY? (A Google Analytics trick, again.)

Image by Bill Selak, via Flickr

Some good numbers for a service business…

What if you want to sell a service, like teaching or custom sewing? Well, then you’re looking at even more focused numbers.

• Which posts are keeping people on your blog the longest, and which ones are generating the most commentary in online spaces? And how does this content relate to your service?

• If you sell your services in a specific geographic location, then how many of your readers are actually in or near this location? (That’s all Analytics.)

• How many people are actually opening the email newsletters you send out? How many of those are actually clicking on the links? (Your newsletter service should give you those stats. MailChimp has awesome data.)

• How many people are emailing you and asking you more detailed questions about your services? If you sprinkle more invitations to contact you with questions around, does that increase the inquiries?

Image by incurable_hippie, via Flickr

Can I drop in a slightly controversial idea here?

In the universe of your numbers, I think it may be wise to be wary of the Pin, the Like, and the +1. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them – many of us, myself included, make these tiny votes of approval all day long. They’re a nice way to show support for people and things we like. The thing is, they generate misleading numbers.

Pins, Likes, and +1′s show us how many people were inspired to make a momentary mouse click. Only in rare cases are they a reliable indicator of the kind of interest you can convert to sales.

Try this: think about what actions people can take on your content that require almost no effort (Liking, pinning, etc.). Then, think about actions that do require some effort (clicking the link to your shop, emailing you, writing a personal recommendation). These effort-full actions are the ones to watch – these are the people whose interest in your business goes beyond a mouse-click’s worth.

So let’s talk: which numbers do you watch most?

(If you need some help figuring that out, I’ve just re-launched my Google Analytics Tricks classes in two flavors: you can learn self-guided, or just hire me to analyze your stats. Check ‘em out!)

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

My friends, today is a momentous day – one I’ve been waiting for eagerly. Today, a group of intrepid and awesome crafters come together to launch a whole blog hop about plastic canvas projects.

You’re getting misty-eyed. I understand. I’ll give you a minute….


Anyway. Somehow I found 13 crafters who were willing to join me in showcasing the wonders of the PC. If you watch the widget at the bottom of this post, you’ll see new links and thumbnails appear each day. My contribution comes at the end of the hop, on May 17 – a pretty and labor-intensive thing I’m really excited to share.

Here are my compadres in crime:

• May 6: Claire, The Bellwether
• May 7: Lorna Watt, Knits for Life
• May 8:Amy Johnson, Maker Mama
• May 9: Erin Currie, Seamstress Erin
• May 10: Carolina Moore, 30 Minute Crafts
• May 13: Cathy Attix, Trinkets in Bloom
• May 14: Jenny Henry, Jenny Henry Designs
• May 15: Janet Perry, Nuts About Needlepoint
• May 16: Pam Harris, Gingerbread Snowflakes

Mark my words: PC history will be made!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

You know, we all had such a good time doing Link Love on Fridays, Tammy has decided to continue the project. If you’d like to do some Link Loving of your own, just follow that link. It’s easy!

Crooked Coasters, from The Long Thread

I’ve been struggling to make straight hand-quilting lines all week, so I got very attracted to the deliberate wonk here. I also love the texture on this warm white linen.

How to Dye Wool With a Long Color Gradient, on The Work is Getting to Me

I think this is perfectly genius. Xandy winds her wool in a tight ball before dyeing, and that allows her to get a continuous gradient that knits or crochets up into an ombre-like pattern like this. Best of all, she used Kool-Aid!

Salt Dough Cookie Stamps, from Alpha Mom

We used to have carved wooden cookie stamps when I was a kid. This version, you can make yourself from good old salt dough. You use all manner of household items and little toys to stamp in the pattern. The resulting cookies are so lacy and pretty.

Frayed Edge Rag Throw Quilt, from Dream a Little Bigger

This is a great construction method for your first quilt. Allison quilted the individual blocks, and then sewed them together with the seam allowances exposed. She clipped into these, and then washed the quilt to fray them. Very casual and comfy.

Portrait Cake, from A Piece of Lisa

This is a simple way to create a cocoa-powder portrait on top of a cake, using a photo, a little Photoshopping, and an Xacto knife. I show you this in case any of you wants to make me a Ron Swanson or Don Draper cake.

Happy Weekend, y’all!

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

This tote bag represents an alignment of planets. It started with a pile of old quilt blocks I grabbed at a thrift store four years ago, only to get them home and discover that they weren’t in good enough shape to sew back into a quilt. After a long time sitting in my stash, something even better happened to those blocks: they got to become part of a guest tutorial for one of my favorite-ever craft blogs, Michele Made Me.

I used one of my favorite techniques, English paper piecing, which turned out to be a nice way to handle the blocks and created this cool pinwheel design. (I actually made two totes! Here’s the other one:)

So, head over to Michele’s blog to see the how-to. While you’re there, check out all her amazing tutorials, in which she does wizardly things with recycled materials.

It just so happened that I had a handful of those blocks leftover, so I made coasters. Here’s a tutorial-ette for those!

First, use the process in the guest post to make your octagon patches. Then, cut a same-size piece of felt and a slightly-smaller piece of batting. …And finally, remove the basting and paper from the octagon patch. Press it nice and flat.

Place the batting on the wrong side of the patch, centered. Use some Wonder Clips, which are the handiest tools known to man, to hold them together.

I stitched in the ditch along the patchwork lines. You can quilt the two layers together however you like. A walking foot on your sewing machine will make you very, very happy.

Pop that felt on the back now, and stitch about 1/8″ away from the edges. Make sure you’re catching all layers in your stitching.

If you like, add another bit of quilting through all the layers. Worry that your ditch-stitching is too wonky in this photo. Then, forget to retake it until after you’ve used up all your quilt blocks. Process your frustration by eating chocolate.

That’s it! These are already deployed around my house. Now, go take a look at my totes, willya?

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Image by stijnbokhove, via Flickr

Welcome to May! This month, our theme is your actual audience, which is a slightly more complex idea than it appears to be on the surface.

Sure, people are reading your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc – but of those, how many are truly paying attention? How many actually have the potential to become your customers? How do you find out who these people are, and how does knowing who they are change your business? It’ll be a thought-provoking month!

Are there any themes you’d like to see covered in future months? Leave me a comment about it!

While I’m here, I’ll remind you that there are just a few more days left to sign up for Monetize Your Craft Blog – the last session of 2013. This is a learning experience that’s highly focused on you and your situation. Learn how it works right over here. We start Monday!

…And for those of you who like to plan ahead, I’ve just listed a few upcoming class offerings in ye olde online store as well.

CraftyPod is a blog about making and thinking. Online Classes • Ebooks • Podcasts If you're seeing this post on another website, please let me know.

Here’s another great example of the kind of “deep technique” craft book I’m really digging lately. Jen Swearington is a talented textile artist, and she’s written a super useful and engaging volume on screen printing, Printing on Fabric: Techniques with Screens, Stencils, Inks, and Dyes.

Jen gets into detail on many approaches to screen printing in this book – both low-tech ones with simple materials and more-advanced concepts. It’s the kind of book you can really grow your skills with, and the kind of book that inspires you in a lot of different directions.

In this video, Jen shares some of her process and we get peeks inside the book. The projects here are just gorgeous – way beyond the simple T-shirt. Take one look at the folding screen project and then try to tell me you don’t want to get into screen printing!

Check out Jen’s website, Jennythreads, and her Etsy shop.

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