Oh my, I haven’t blogged in so long! I have been working on many quilting projects in my spare time, and you can see more real time progress on my Instagram account.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend some classes at A Quilter’s Affair in the week leading up to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. I usually attend each year, but my sister got to join me after she missed the prior 2 years.

I wanted to surprise her with a fun gift as a memento of our trip. We stay at the Best Western Ponderosa, which used to have a llama herd. The hotel retired the herd and replaced it with an alpaca herd! These alpacas have been at the hotel grounds for just a few weeks so they are still a bit shy.

The lovely Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts recently posted a series of new mini quilts that she designed, including an alpaca! It was fate!! I immediately purchased the pattern and set out to make 2 alpaca minis.

This pattern is traditionally pieced and goes together pretty quickly. Here’s a look at the quilt tops with my inspector:

Romeo inspects the alpaca quilt tops

The solids are hand dyed from Cherrywood, the background is from Karen Lewis Textiles, and the alpaca body is the aqua Fairy Dust print from Tula Pink’s line called Pinkerville. The other prints are various scraps from my stash.

I quilted these alpaca minis 2-up on my HQ Avante. I did a combination of ruler work to outline the alpacas and some free-motion swirls in the background. I used a black and white striped print for the binding.

Quilting the alpaca minis

I surprised my sister with her choice of quilt last week. She picked the alpaca with the orange hair, and I’m keeping the alpaca with the green hair.

I just couldn’t resist getting a picture of the completed mini quilts with the alpacas at the hotel. One alpaca was very brave and came to check them out!

An alpaca inspects the completed quilts

We had such a fun week together! In my next post, I’ll talk about the classes that we attended at A Quilter’s Affair.

Happy quilting!

Jen