One of my work colleagues loved one of my fabric art pieces so much she got her husband to buy it for her for Christmas! She’s now had it framed and it’s hanging on the wall in her home.
She has a doctorate in marine ecology, so the undersea theme was a good match.
Thanks for sending me the photo showing it in its new home, Steph!
It doesn’t seem that long ago when I posted the last set of Etsy Treasuries some of my stuff was featured in! Here it is, Australia Day (January 26), and I’ve got another 15 Treasuries to add — some of which are Australia Day Treasuries.
Click on a small image to show it full size.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 50,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 80 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 756 posts. There were 182 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 70mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was August 3rd with 228 views. The most popular post that day was The *best* Blueberry Muffin recipe.
The top referring sites in 2010 were whateye8.com, quiltinggallery.com, search.aol.com, search.conduit.com, and moje.dama.cz.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for blueberry muffin recipe, meshwork, blueberry muffin recipe frozen blueberries, blueberry muffins, and blueberry muffins recipe.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
The *best* Blueberry Muffin recipe July 2006
91 comments
Fake names for documentation April 2007
5 comments
IE min-height issue solved May 2007
14 comments
Japanese Meshwork September 2008
5 comments
Cleaning fusible glue off a Teflon coated iron July 2009
1 comment
Here are the most recent items I’ve added to my Etsy store (http://RhondaMadeIt.etsy.com). My luggage tags are pretty popular and as I sold quite a few for Christmas gifts, I was running out! So I made a few more in some really striking fabrics.
I had a birthday about two weeks ago, and spent about 10 days celebrating it in various ways!
My birthday was a weekday and a work day for me, so we started the weekend before and continued on into the weekend after it.
On the first Friday we drove down to Albany (Western Australia, not New York!), where we stayed for two nights. On Friday night we went to Rustlers Steakhouse where we both had the enormous on-the-rib rib-eye steaks. I had mine medium rare with blue cheese butter and my husband had his with pepper sauce. The sharpness of the blue cheese was a match made in heaven with the char grill flavour of the steak! Mmmmmmm….. Wonderful food!
On Saturday we drove to a neighbouring small town (Mt Barker) where my husband went hunting (vinyl) records in the most amazing ‘collectibles’ store. Amazing because it was almost impossible to move in there — there was SO much stuff. I had to remove my jacket and purse as I was sure I’d knock something over. There were thousands of books, hundreds of records, lots of kitchenwares, tins, toys, and all sorts of STUFF. The guy who owns the store is a real bower bird and I might have found something for myself if his store wasn’t so overwhelming! My husband found about 10-15 records he wanted (he didn’t actually want the records — just the info on them about the tracks, the producers etc. and the liner notes), so he bought those. Oh, and we bought some really nice shiraz from a local winery (Plantagenet Wines).
Later on the Saturday we were back in Albany and it was my turn to shop — this time at the local quilting fabric store (I lead such an exciting life!). We also drove around Albany and out to Frenchmans’ Bay, where stupid me decided I wanted to see the blowholes where the Southern Ocean meets the Australian coast. Surprisingly, my husband came with me (normally he sits in the car and waits until I’ve ‘been there, done that’). It was a long and fairly steep walk down to the blowholes — and it seemed like an even longer and steeper walk back up. I was stuffed!
We had dinner that night at an Italian restaurant in town.
Sunday we drove back home (it’s a 4-hour drive to/from our house to Albany).
On the Monday I went to lunch with two friends at the Apple Basket quilting store and cafe in Donnybrook. I didn’t buy any fabric! We also went to a clothing boutique in town where I bought an outfit.
On the second Saturday we went to my parents’ place about 45 mins drive away. Mum had her 79th birthday on the 22nd, so we combined my birthday and hers plus Christmas by going out to an Indian restaurant on Saturday night. We stayed overnight with Mum and Dad and came home Sunday.
My LONG birthday was over!
Some pictures from the area near the blowholes; I was amazed at the almost perfectly straight split in the large granite rock! Click a small image to show it in full size.
Here are the most recent items I’ve added to my Etsy store (http://RhondaMadeIt.etsy.com). I just love the ‘Finding Nemo’ tropical fish fabric — it’s so bright and cheerful; and the pea fabric. I’ve had the watermelon fabric before, so it was nice to find it in a store again. And the turtle fabric was for some of the people I work with.
Here are the latest Etsy Treasuries some of the pieces from my Etsy store (http://www.etsy.com/shop/RhondaMadeIt) are featured in. Click on a small image to view it in full size.
One of the lovely ladies at the quilt retreat weekend I enjoyed in September gave me a ‘charm pack’ of 42 five inch squares in lovely autumnal Moda fabrics. Autumn/country colours are not the sort of colours I typically work with — I favour bright colours. But these squares were really quite pretty. They were too small to use individually in various projects, and besides, someone had gone to a lot of thought putting together this bundle, making sure all the fabrics matched each other. It seemed a shame to split them apart.
So I decided to make a lap quilt from them. Just a simple one. Nothing fancy — just joining the existing pieces together without cutting or doing any other piecing. Then adding a border and binding using fabric from my stash. Oh, I also decided to add a ‘peeper’ — that dark brown flap of fabric that sits between the main top and the border.
I free-motion quilted the main top in a large meandering stipple in various rayon threads, and quilted the border in a free-motion pebble motif.
I gave this quilt to my work colleague and friend, Susan, after she told me how much she loved it! I really like it when quilts go to a home where they will be appreciated.
Click on an image to see it full size.
Here’s a trick I read about a few days ago (I can’t remember where I read it though). When you have many quilt blocks to piece together and you have them arranged in row order, use a pin to number the rows!
Previously, I’ve used Post-it notes, chalk markers, etc. but this pin trick is the quickest and easiest! I just wrote the numbers on the flower pin heads with a permanent Sharpie, with the base of the number at the base of the pin head. Easy.
I don’t know why I never thought of it or heard of it before!
I don’t always get emailed when one of my items has been added to an Etsy Treasury, so every so often I do a search for my store name (RhondaMadeIt) in the Etsy Treasuries and find a few I didn’t even know I was featured in!
Here are the latest ones from the past few weeks; by my reckoning, they are the 41st to 47th Treasuries I’ve been part of.
Click on each thumbnail to open the image in full size.
