an epic tale

This has been 9 months and 2 "sneak-peak posts" in the making, so I guess I'll have to start at the beginning. I went to a quilt meeting. It was amazing. On the drive home I kept thinking I had to make something, anything, that was quilting, but modern, and different. And I had this photo in my head...

Yes it's a spider. On the wood siding of the cabin. And why it became the inspiration for my first foray back into quilting since the 90's is beyond me. It just did.

While I really like the idea of story quilts, there is admittedly not much to this tale. There was a spider on the wall and I took a photo of it. End of story. This is what the photo inspired for the front of the quilt...

The red/orange strips are the siding, the grey strips are the spaces between the wooden slats. The spider is there too, but you have to look for it... 

And that's pretty much where the literal interpretation ends. I quilted a web over it all. And in my planning research I discovered there is an actual quilting block called the "spider web", so I decided I had to incorporate one of those too. I put it on the back because I love that modern quilters play around with their backings as well. 

The blue of the backing is reminiscent of the incredible night skies at the cabin. The binding signifies the water's edge. 

And because all of that is more of an interpretive dance than an accurate storytelling, and because I've learned that every quilt deserves a name, and a label, I've called it "Spider Dance".

(special thanks to Photographer Son for helping with the photos here... 

quilts are actually quite hard to photograph!)