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/ 

Look What's On My Wall, Y'All! I Cannot Follow the Directions, After All

Check out my design wall this lovely morning.  I cut out all of my triangles!  Except now I'm about to cut out MORE triangles and start swapping out fabrics that I don't love from the original design.

Ready To Sew...  Maybe

This Tabby Mountain project was going to be my first ever quilt where I follow all of the directions, use all the same fabrics as the quilt designer, and make mine look just like the sample, because I was totally smitten by this adorable quilt featuring Tula Pink's Tabby Road prints and I had already purchased the FQ precuts of this collection without any clear idea of what I was going to make with it.  

Tabby Road Collection FQs

Sew from the stash, right?  Well, first I swapped out the Free Spirit Designer Solid fabrics for close matches in the Moda Bella Solids line because I didn't have enough yardage of the original solid colors and my LQS only carries Bella Solids...  and I snuck in two tone-on-tone solids, the red row and the navy row at the bottom.  My red is also deliberately a bit less orangey than the Free Spirit Autumn fabric specified by the pattern.

See How My Red and Navy "Solids" Have Subtle Plus Signs On Them?

I'm happy with those two not-quite-solids, especially since those rows are nicely spaced out on the quilt rather than right next to each other.  Next change: If you follow the pattern directions and just cut each fat quarter into a 10" strip and then subcut into four 30 degree triangles, with a directional print you are going to get two triangles with the print facing one direction and two triangles with the print facing the opposite direction.  And if you lay out your triangles exactly as shown in the diagram, exactly as they were laid out at the sample quilt that went to Quilt Market, you are going to have upside down kitty cats and upside down cans of cat food on your quilt.  So my next change was to swap some of my triangles around so that all of my directional prints were right side up.

As my design wall was filling up with these bright, happy triangles, I was getting so excited -- this top should sew up fast, and won't it be fun to quilt on the longarm machine?!  And yet, misgivings began to creep in.

"I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me"

I really am not a fan of the small scale eyeball print Cat Eyes, at least not for giant 10" triangle patches.  

Tula Pink - Tabby Road - Cat Eyes - Strawberry Cooler

Maybe chopped up into smaller HSTs or something, but it's a really busy print that makes my head hurt if I look at it for too long.  Also, with a thousand little eyeballs peering down at me from my design wall, it reminds me of "Big Brother is Watching You" from George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984.  Now, those of you who own kitty cats -- isn't it terrifying to imagine that your precious pets are actually there to spy on you, reporting back to some evil totalitarian government who will someday come to arrest you, torture you, and brainwash you into submission?  

I hear Rockwell and Michael Jackson singing "Somebody's Watching Me" in my head and it's giving me the creeps!

Clearly there are too many eyeballs on this quilt, and some of them have to go.  The Tabby Mountain pattern uses all but two of the 25 prints in the Tabby Road collection, and for some reason the designer chose to use all four colorways of the creepy eyeball print and only three of the four colorways of the Disco Kitty print, which is my favorite. 

Disco Kitties! Love!!!

The first four eyeball triangles that came off my design wall were the Aqua (Strawberry Cooler) colorway, and they were replaced by the missing Aqua colorway of the Disco Kitty print shown above on the right.  But there are still too many eyeballs watching me!

So instead of starting to sew my rows together, I've been digging through my stash and auditioning possible fabrics that I could swap out for the remaining Cat Eyes.  When all of the fabrics in a quilt are from the same fabric collection and you want to just replace a few of them, it's a lot trickier than coordinating fabrics for a scrappy quilt where all of the fabrics are very different.  For this quilt, I need my replacement prints to be the right colors in the right shades, but I also think that the prints need to have the same level of detail and the same "feel" as the prints in the Tabby Road collection, and I need to balance the visual weight of the new print with the mix of prints already on the wall.  You know, scale, value, big floral type versus geometric, stripe, or dot...  The other consideration, now that I'm no longer following directions and I'm back in charge of artistic direction, is that I don't have any little girls in my life right now and I don't want this quilt to look too juvenile.  We want to have fun with our bold, brightly colored kitties, but not Romper Room fun, if you know what I mean.

Tabby Road Fur Ball Fabric in Strawberry Tangerine

And that brings us to this particular print, the jagged-edge giant dot fabric named Fur Ball.  I don't know, what do you guys think?  The ketchup-and-mustard Strawberry Tangerine is my least favorite colorway, but when I step back and view the whole thing from a distance I see that the rows of red and cheddar yellow solids won't make as much sense if I eliminate this print.  It's cute for sure, but is it Cat Lady Cute or Toddler Cute?

Kaffe Fassett Collective, Roman Glass and Paperweight Prints

I've got some Kaffe Fassett prints under consideration, perhaps swapping out eyeball prints for various colorways of Kaffe's Roman Glass and Paperweight prints shown above, but I don't know...  I need for this to percolate in the back of my brain for a bit.

I've got a dress rehearsal this afternoon for Monday's VOX Martin Luther King, Jr. concert, singing at three church services at Christ Providence tomorrow morning so I probably won't be back in my studio again until Sunday afternoon.  I'll see how I feel about it then.

Well, it's now nearly 1 PM, my dress rehearsal starts in an hour, and as my husband pointed out to me, I'm not dressed yet.  Which means this blog post has finally reached

THE END

PS: I'm linking up a day late with all my favorite Friday linky parties:

• ·       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/

Ta-Da! Triangles On My Design Wall!

The past few days have been busy, so I'm pleased to report that I've made some paltry progress on my new Tabby Mountain quilt.  

Triangles!

There are more triangles on my cutting table, along with a stack of other fabrics waiting to  be cut up.

More Triangles Ready For the Wall

I know this might not look like much to show for myself, but it's not like I've been holed up in my sewing room for the past five days; I've been busy as usual with other things.  Since my last post on Friday, I've sung at three church services plus four and a half hours of rehearsals, baked a chocolate peppermint fudge Bundt cake to bring to a post-Christmas choir party that I attended with my husband: 

I Should Have Left Out the Peppermint Extract.  It Tasted Like Chocolate Toothpaste Cake.

...Cooked chicken soup from scratch (with my first-ever attempt at Matzo balls!) and delivered it to a sick friend (that soup was delicious, but alas, I forgot to get a picture for you guys).  I also managed to fit in three hours of exercise, a book study, and two doctor appointments.  All since Friday, and all in my so-called "free time" -- I'm not even listing any of the time I spent on activities pertaining to work, housekeeping, or parenting.  So although my progress may look pitiful to some, I am delighted to see those triangles slowly but steadily multiplying on the design wall.  Sewing them together will probably go faster than cutting them out, don't you think?

I prewashed my fabrics so one thing slowing down my cutting is that I have to press and starch each piece of fabric before I start cutting into it.  I'm a fervent believer in starch for precision piecing anyway, but I knew I wanted to start out with starched fabric for this project in particular to control the tendency of all of those long bias edges to want to stretch.  

My Ancient Chinese Secret: Spray Starch

Cutting the solid fabrics and a couple of the prints goes faster than cutting out stripes, directional prints, and kitty cats.  The Tabby Road print is my favorite fabric in the collection, so I'm cutting those triangles one at a time and trying to get one kitty cat in each triangle.  

Fussy-Cutting My Kitty Cats

Of course I want my stripes perfectly straight, directional prints right side up instead of sideways, and prints like the rows of cat food need to be cut straight as well.  

Fabric Edge Is Torn, Print Is Slightly Off Grain

As you can see in the photo above, despite the bottom edge of the fabric being torn so I know it's perfectly on grain, the rows of cat food cans are actually printed onto the fabric slightly crooked.  I want my Cat Snacks to be right side up and nice and straight on my quilt, so I cut my 10" strip parallel to the rows of cans.

Cutting First Pair of 30 Degree Triangles from Double Layer of Cat Snacks Fabric

...And, as you can see in this photo, there isn't a lot of room for error when cutting triangles from these FQ (fat quarter) prints.  I need four triangles from each FQ, and once I've straightened my fabric edge up and cut a 10" strip, I barely have enough to get those four triangles out of it.  Yes, I'm accumulating large fabric scraps of each print for another project, but there are no scraps large enough to cut out another 10" 30 degree triangle if I was to mess one up.

Cutting Second Pair of Triangles From The Same FQ Strip

See what I mean about not much room for error?  I'd rather cut up these luscious prints slowly and carefully than fast and recklessly.  Speed isn't worth what you lose in accuracy, or the finger you sliced off with your rotary cutter, slicing through fabric left and right like a crazy person.  

Future Triangles Waiting in the Wings: Needing to be Starched, Pressed, and Chopped Up

I am really loving working with these saturated colors and fun prints, I can tell you that.  It's like a feast for my eyeballs, calorie-free and everything, which is perfect for January!

Anyway, this was just supposed to be a "quick" post, so I'm signing off now.  I'm linking up with:

• ·       Let’s Bee Social at www.sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/
• ·       Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/
• ·       WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com
• ·       WIPs With Friends at www.mamaspark.blogspot.com

Nothing Is Finished! Let's Start Something New!!! Tula Pink's Tabby Mountain Quilt is Happening TODAY!

Greetings from the oddly frigid winter wasteland of Charlotte, North Carolina!  I hope your new year is off to a better start than mine is.  I frittered away my New Year's Day baking cranberry orange scones for my family, shopping for fabric online, and falling down a flight of stairs because my socks slipped on the carpet when I was carrying down a laundry basket.  I caught myself with the railing and didn't hurt anything more than my pride, but this was NOT an auspicious beginning to 2018!  My biggest accomplishment for Day One of 2018 is that I found a new quilt project that I want to make, and I am going to make it TODAY.  I am so excited!

60" x 74" Tabby Mountain Quilt by Tula Pink for Free Spirit

This is the 60" x 74" Tabby Mountain Quilt, a free Tula Pink pattern that is available from Free Spirit right here.  All you need to make this is the Tabby Road Fat Quarter collection, which I already own, and a third of a yard each of eight coordinating solid fabrics which I also already own.  I think I could cut and piece this entire quilt top in the time it takes me to make just ONE of my paper pieced pineapple log cabin quilts, and I think it's adorable exactly as Tula Pink designed it, so no need to spend additional time designing an alternate colorway, either.  So, why am I sitting here writing about it instead of upstairs MAKING it, you might ask?  

Because, in order to show off the large scale kitty cat print fabrics effectively, this pattern uses 30 degree triangles cut from 10" strips of fabric.  Although I own all of the fabrics and I even own a Cut For the Cure 30 degree triangle ruler, that one is only 7 or 8" tall and this is only going to be a quick and easy project if I can quickly and ACCURATELY cut out all of those triangles...

30 Degree Non Slip Triangle Ruler by Creative Grids

The Creative Grids ruler pictured above is 20" tall and it would be perfect for this project.  I just called my Bernina shop (5 minutes from home) and they don't have the ruler I need, so that means I'm either going to JoAnn's (20 minutes away) or to the next closest quilt shop or fabric store (the Bernina quilt shop in Lowell or Mary Jo's in Gastonia, both about 45 minutes to an hour each way depending on traffic).  Ugh.  Maybe I'll drag my teenage permit-holding driver out of bed and make him drive me around from sewing shop to sewing shop for driving practice???  Probably not worth the earful of whining I'd get from my reluctant chauffeur.

Although I really love this quilt exactly as is, with all of the same fabrics, I also think this pattern would be great for using up some of the other large scale prints in my stash.  And in addition to continuing to work on my WIP projects this year, I also need to mix in some quick, easy and fun projects for "instant" gratification -- and much-needed longarm quilting practice.  I need to build up a lot more confidence and experience with that beast of a longarm machine before I can quilt something that I've been working on for years, like my hand applique projects or my pineapple log cabin quilt!

Revised Plans for Tabby Road Quilt: Giant Clam Shells!

So I'm still mulling those Tula Pink Tabby Road fabrics and what to do with them.  I posted several options that I was kicking around here about a week ago, but I wasn't 100% in love with any of them.  My newest plan is to forget my Accuquilt GO! dies and go old school, cutting REALLY BIG 9 1/2" clam shells with a rotary cutter and an acrylic template. 

57" x 57" Quilt Using 9 1/2" Clam Shells

See how much better the larger patch size showcases the large scale prints in this collection?  Here's what the quilt would look like if I did 8" clam shells, the size of the larger Accuquilt die that doesn't work with my GO! Baby cutter anyway:

48" x 72 1/2" Quilt Using 8" Accuquilt Die

It's a good size for the prints, but it doesn't make sense to buy another, more expensive die cutter just for this project.  This is what it would look like (eventually, if I lived long enough to finish it!) if I made a throw-sized quilt with the 4" clam shell Accuquilt die that I already own:

48 1/2" x 60" Quilt Using 4" Accuquilt Die

Not only do we lose the effect of the large scale prints with 4" clam shells, but it also takes over 300 of them to make just a throw sized quilt.  That is a LOT of futzy curved piecing, people!!  Not that I'm averse to time-consuming projects.  I just have too many of those projects in my current rotation.  I want the Tabby Road Kitties quilt to piece fairly quickly so I can get it onto my longarm quilt frame and quilt it with a fun, allover pantograph design.  Mama needs a FINISH!

This is the acrylic template I ordered from Australian Etsy seller Sunset Seams:

9 1/2" Finished Acrylic Clam Shell Template from Sunset Seams

What I really like about this template is that it's transparent, so I can fussy cut my clam shells (precisely centering the portion of each quilt that I want to showcase) and there are little holes along the seam line of all three curved seams, so I can mark with a Chacopel pen to align my convex and concave curves precisely for hand or machine piecing.  (Probably machine piecing, since I'm still working on my needle turned applique project and am nowhere near finished with that!)  And see that little hole in the center of the template?  Using the center markings at the top, middle, and bottom point of the clamshell, I'll be able to add 1/4" with my see-through ruler and easily trim some of my clam shells into half units for the side edges of my quilt.  That same hole will let me draw a straight seam line from the left to right edges of the clam shells that need to be cut down for the partial shells at the top and bottom edges of the quilt.  You can't just cut the clamshells right in half and use both pieces, since you still need seam allowances beyond the stitching line.

The other part of my plan that has evolved is that my newest iteration of the quilt design incorporates other fabrics along with those from the Tabby Road collection.  I snuck some solid gray patches and a couple of rogue prints and batiks into the most recent EQ7 version of this quilt (that first picture at the top of my post), and then I took a quick poke through my stash and found several fabrics that would be lovely with the Disco Kitties:

Tabby Road Fabrics Plus A Few Other Prints and Kona Solids

I've got my Kona Cotton Solids color chart out, too, because it's going to need to be the EXACTLY RIGHT shade of gray.  Maybe even a solid blue and/or magenta pink as well.  I've got this independent streak that prevents me from making a quilt entirely with someone else's palette of color-coordinated prints.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  :-)  But the design process is my favorite part of any quilt and it's not something I'm willing to completely delegate to anyone else, not even to someone as fabulous as Tula Pink!  Also, there's something spiritually satisfying about incorporating at least a couple fabrics from previous quilts into each new quilt.  That way every quilt is connected to all of the others.

And another thing I'm not sure about is whether to include ALL of the fabrics from the collection in this quilt.  I know that the friend for whom I'm planning to make this quilt is a fan of pinks, blues, and purples, but I'm not so sure the bright, nearly fluorescent orange is a good fit for her.  Although it looks great with these little orphan blocks that I pulled out of a scrap bin:

Orange Tabby Road Fabrics Plus Leftovers From My Amish Baby Quilt

See?  How much fun is THAT?!  Those are leftover units from the Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt that I gifted to my cousin Allison two years ago.  Maybe the orange Tabby Road fabrics will go into an entirely different quilt.  And so nothing comes completely out of nowhere, and everything has some connection to something that came before.  Just like history, art, genealogy, science, and everything else in this marvelous Universe -- Everything is connected to everything else.

Happy stitching, everyone!  Today I'm linking up with:

·       Let’s Bee Social at http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

·       Midweek Makers at http://quiltfabrication.blogspot.com/

·       WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

... and with Design Wall Monday, newly hosted over at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts