This month we bring you a unique piece designed and framed by designer Heather C.

A few months ago we had a customer bring in an eagle feather for us to frame. This customer was gifted this feather from a friend who belongs to a Native American Tribe here in Montana.

This feather is very special to our customer and he was looking to preserve and protect it so he could display it in his home.

Heather was up for the challenge to put together an awesome design fitting for this beautiful Eagle Feather. Really this feather speaks for itself. It is a piece of nature that people rarely get to see up close, let alone have on display in their home.

To frame and protect this piece Heather started out using only acid free and ph neutral materials. She chose a mat from our Bainbridge line of mats called Terra, it is a light brown toned mat that really made all the details of the feather stand out. The mat color complimented the tones in the feather and gave this piece a cohesive look.

How do we mount the feather to the mat? We need to make sure that the feather is secure and stays in place, we did this by sewing the feather down to the matting material. When deciding where to sew the feather down we are looking for the place that will hide the stitches the best as well as the places that will hold it the most secure so we can use as few stitches as possible. For this particular piece, it also has the leather wrapped around the quill of the feather. We also made the leather strips appear as though they are hanging naturally.

After choosing the matting Heather had a few ideas for the frame. Our customer came in looking to get a black frame, but Heather had some other ideas. There seems to be a common misconception in the framing world... a lot of people are on the look out for a black frame, because black seems to go with everything. That's where we come in to help you. Black is very heavy and can easily take away from a piece of art or a shadowbox design. In this case a black shadowbox would have been too dark and bulky. The frame needed for this design required height. If you were to use a black tall, shadowbox frame for this design it would be very dark, being that the finished piece turned out skinny and long, it would be hard to see past the frame and hard to really be able to enjoy the feather.

With that being said, Heather found a rustic, natural feeling frame from one of our moulding suppliers, Roma. This frame is from their country collection and it is a tan/taupe colored frame on the top with a lot of nail holes and it has a natural wood feel. It also has a darker grey/walnut color on the outside of the frame, brining out the darker notes in the feather. This beautiful frame mimics the colors in the eagle feather and really brings the whole piece together.

To give the feather the final touch Heather used TruVue's 99% UV conservation clear glass to protect the framing materials and the feather over time.

We are so happy how this turned out and our customer could not have been more pleased.

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