Ta-DONE: Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties Wrapped Up & Relinquished. Hallelujah!

HEY, YOU GUYS!!  My Tabby Mountain quilt is officially Quilted, Bound, Laundered, and finally, FINALLY finished:

Highlights from the Tabby Mountain Photo Shoot

Having been inspired by the mad photography skills exhibited by other quilters on social media, I dragged my husband around against his will took advantage of an overcast Saturday afternoon to drive around in search of the perfect location for a photo shoot.  My favorites are the ones where I wrapped the quilts around the bronze bull statues in the Ballantyne Corporate park.  

2000 lb. Bull Sculpted by Peter Woytuk, Quilt Made By Me

But you can't really get a good look at the quilt in the bull photos.

A Bridge Over a Golf Cart Path at Ballantyne Country Club

I picked this spot because I liked the texture of the stone bridge and the flowers below were just the right shade of purple, but alas the quilt is tiny in order to get the bridge AND the flowers in the shot, and you can't see any detail.

"Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties," 57 1/2" x 72"

You can see the quilting texture better in this shot.  By the way, the sides of this quilt do lay nice and straight and flat.  It's an annoying optical illusion from the diagonal quilting lines that is making the edges of the quilt appear wavy.

"Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties," 57 1/2" x 72"

The vibrant colors look best in this photo, taken on a shady patch of the lawn.

Gotta Have a Rear View

Here's how the back ended up.  I ended up really liking this extra wide backing fabric, even though it was a bit of a pain.  The sateen weave frays like crazy and is especially prone to being snagged by pins and needles during the quilting and binding process, but I love the soft sheen and it feels really nice to the touch, too.

Post-Laundering Texture

And one more for the road:

So, to recap, this is the free Tabby Mountain Quilt pattern that was designed by Tula Pink for Free Spirit Fabrics, showcasing her Tabby Road fabric collection.  You can get that pattern here.  I understand that some of the prints in this collection are already selling out, but I found an etsy seller who has fabric kits still available for this quilt here (you're welcome!).  Honestly, this quilt is ALL ABOUT THE FABRIC.

I did swap out some Kaffe Fassett prints for the weird eyeball fabrics that I didn't care for in my own quilt, and I found near-equivalent solid color fabrics from other lines because my local quilt shops don't carry the Free Spirit Solids that are specified in the pattern.  Also -- and this is important -- if you follow the cutting directions and yardage requirements in the pattern, your large scale print fabrics will be SIDEWAYS and/or UPSIDE DOWN instead of right side up in your finished quilt.  This would bug me SO MUCH -- I'm glad I caught that and purchased additional yardage of my prints.  And I fussy cut my absolute favorite print, the Disco Kitties, so that a kitty cat would be featured and centered nicely in each of those triangles.

Disco Kitty from Free Spirit Fabrics in 2 Colorways

I used this Creative Grids ruler to make it easier to cut out the large 30 degree triangles quickly and accurately:

The Creative Grids 30 degree triangle ruler was definitely a worthwhile purchase, in case you're considering making a Tabby Mountain quilt of your own.  I doubt I'll make another quilt EXACTLY like Tabby Mountain, but I think something similar would be a really cute way to showcase Christmas fabrics or novelty prints for a baby quilt, especially now that I've finally figured out how to piece the giant triangles together accurately.  

Using the Creative Grids 30 Degree Triangle Ruler to Fussy Cut Prints

And now, for the Nitty Gritty on the Disco Kitties:

• Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties is only my SECOND quilt with my APQS Millenium longarm quilting machine.
• This is my FIRST custom quilt on the longarm machine, FIRST time quilting with acrylic rulers and templates on the longarm, and many other firsts (winding my own bobbins with the scary Turbo Winder, first time ripping out bad stitches, first time with lots of different threads...).
• This was supposed to be a "quick and easy" quilt for practicing with my longarm machine.  I started it in January and it's now the end of May, so it has been a good 5 months in the making (let's all roll our eyes together, shall we?).
• I used Hobbs Tuscany Wool for this quilt, a variety of different quilting threads (primarily Isacord and Glide trilobal polyester), and the backing is a luscious extra-wide sateen fabric also designed by Tula Pink, "Freefall" in Orchid colorway.
• All of the quilting is hand-guided -- unfortunately I don't have a computer on this machine.

Today I'm linking up and partying with:

• ·       Finish It Up Friday at www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com
• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
• ·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/2018/06/plus-quilt-in-island-batiks-finished-or.html
• ·TGIFF Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday, hosted this week by http://devotedquilter.blogspot.com/