Llamalicious - Finished!

*Today is the last day to enter the giveaway that corresponded with the Christmas in July schedule and prizes! You have until midnight :)



I know that llamas are not generally nice creatures in real life. But on fabric they're so so soooo cute! Laurie Wisbrun is a genius.
As a result of this, there is a picture overload that follows. I'm not even sorry about it.

See?! So I was more than happy to add them to the mini that I made for Jessica in our personal swap. I completely revamped my idea to work the llamas and the flapdoodle hats into the mix. Jessica requested colors of blues/turquoise/greens/yellows/grays, and then I think the hat fabric throws in that little punch of red to keep it from being too "matchy".

 I made the strips in groupings of 4 print fabrics and 4 white strips. The white finishes at just 1/2" and the prints are 3/4" finished. Then I sewed them into rows.

 The middle part did require Y-seams around the llama diamond, but it really wasn't difficult. In fact, I had to sew seams multiple times during the making of this mini, but the Y-seams I did all in one go.

 And hey, look at those matching points!

 So the hardest part of making this...? Going from the above picture, which is everything all sewn together...

 ...to this squared off version. Seriously. I had to stop sewing and go try to relax first, because I was that nervous about it!

 And, in the spirit of keeping it real around here, this is the back. I almost always press my seams open, but I must admit it was tough with this because the strips were so narrow.

 I also really debated when I got to the quilting. I didn't want to quilt over the llama, and the mini is already pretty busy, so I didn't want to add to that either. What do you all do when your quilt doesn't have a lot of negative space?

 I used my go-to straight-line quilting marking tool...my pattern tracing wheel that I use for making clothing. I marked lines half an inch apart going against the grain of the direction of the strips.

 I auditioned several options for binding, which I usually do by pinning strips to the quilt to see how it looks. Stephen even weighed in, although he chose the gray. In the end I'm so glad I went with white.

 Jessica told me she's spending a little time with our llama friend before she names him. I suggested Larry or Ferdinand. I love pets with absurd people names. It cracks me up. 

 My favorite part about this design [other than the llama, duh] is the fact that when the strips are going in the same direction that they don't match up from row to row, which you can see in the above picture. But then when they go in opposite directions that's when they match up perfectly. I think it gives the overall design a lot more movement. In fact, I think it kind of looks like anime cartoons when they have the little character flying through the air and have those sound or movement markings around them. I'm not sure a lot of quilters are too familiar with anime...Full Metal Alchemist anyone?

 I used leftover bits of the rows that were cut off on the back. It's like itsy bitsy stacked coins! It rounds out in size at around 16x20" [I think, I was very tired when I measured it...]

 And hey, the quilting shows up great on the back!

 I'm getting pretty good at catching all the binding the first time when machine sewing it all on.

Jessica, I hope you don't mind that I might make this exact mini over again and have it in my own home. We can be twinsies :)

*Linked at SewHappyGeek, Pieceful Life, Canoe Ridge Creations
*Also linked at Quilt Story