Mama Llama Love

While in Houston last fall, I ran across this pattern and simply couldn’t resist! The expressions on the faces are just delightful, so the pattern came home with me. I pretty much followed the colors as given on the pattern, since I wasn’t really sure what colors llamas really are, but I gave them a blue background. Instead of putting a wide flange between the body of the quilt and the border, I used piped cording, which I repeated next to the binding.

I had planned to do lots of fun quilting in the background, but the fusible was too stiff to allow that; the background would have shrunk and caused major “ballooning” of the llamas. Yes, I could have quilted the llamas more densely to even things out, but that same fusible was a bear to stitch through; when it wasn’t gumming up my needle and causing the thread to break, it was causing far too many skipped stitches — live and learn. :S In the end, I used ruler work to do simple rows of double lines in the background, going at a rough 60° angle. The llamas are just outlined, with a few strategic outlines in the major appliquéd sections.

I still love those sweet faces!