Finishing Touches: The Indie Herringbone Quilt

just realized as I was posting this that the quilt is technically upside down here...so close

Once upon a time, a very very long time ago, I made this quilt which you can read a bit more about here. It languished in a pile of finished projects, just waiting to be photographed so I could hold onto a piece of it before sending it off to its intended owner. Well life happened and as I was feeling low about other things, it was nice to see this in my studio reminding me of what I could accomplish, nudging me to tackle new projects and make something I was equally proud of that I could keep for our home.

 

The reverse which I think I might actually prefer the most...

It's high time I did just that though so, thanks to some lovely mild weather we had this past weekend, we loaded up the car with finished quilts and set off on an adventure to discover some quiet corners of our town that might provide an interesting background. There are two lakes where we live and along an obscure side street, we came upon a deserted inlet off one of the lakes that seemed to belong to no one. Overlooking the lake, this pine-y point of land seemed the perfect spot to take some photos. It's such an interesting thing to me to find hidden nooks like this in ones own backyard—ones with lakefront access, at that!

But I suppose I digress...here you can see some detailed shots of how the quilting itself ended up. I used some contrasting magenta thread to do some straight line quilting on the top and bottom sashing which gives it such a great texture. For the main herringbone part of the quilt, I simply followed the bars of fabric to quilt an improv zig-zag line through them from side to side every couple rows.

I finished the binding and embroidered label by hand—finishing touches that really pull the whole thing together. For the label, I was trying to create a visualization of how I actually went about constructing the rows of herringbone. I used back stitch and satin for the design and split for the little lettering in colors that matched as close as I could get them. I really do love when a label can tell a bit of the story of how a handmade object came to be, even in the smallest sense.

Ok, one last gratuitous glamor shot. The direct afternoon light and reflections off the lake made trying to do this successfully kind of impossible, but I just had to share it because I got excited about the idea of pulling if off while we were there and, a few half-baked attempts with fixing it in photoshop later, it will at least suffice—

The fabric used is from Pat Bravo's Indie line by Art Gallery Fabrics