Recently I posted about the Alpaca Ranch I pass every year on my way to Sisters for our Statler Retreat. I had written to Sue Bunch of Back to Back Fiber Products. She and her sister work together raising Alpacas and producing products using the alpaca wool. Sue was gracious enough to respond to my quest for accurate information regarding this great batting as well as all the other great alpaca products they for us to play with. I wanted to share her repsonse with you. You'll find her comments in red below added to the original post content.
Question of the day: How can you tell an alpaca from a llama … the ears of the llama are banana shaped and the ears of the alpaca are straight.
Alpacas come from the Andes Mountains of South America and have been domesticated by the native people for thousands of years. In fact there are no wild alpacas and they are a protected species by law. Similar to llamas in appearance, alpacas are members of the camel family. Alpacas were bred specifically for their fiber and you will find most people using the fibers for knitting and weaving. Back to Back Fibers are now using their Wool Blend battings for felting....both needlefelting and wet felting....as well as for quilters.
Alpaca Batting Facts in a nutshell:
- Alpaca fibers are soft and luxurious and are somewhat like hair being glossy in appearance. These qualities create a product that has wonderful drape making it a great fiber for use in garment construction.
- Alpaca fibers are very dense causing them to be warmer than wool when used for clothing and bedding. Actually, what make the fiber so warm is that each fiber is hollow making it naturally insulated. I believe alpacas and polar bears are the only animals with that type of fiber.
- When the fibers get wet there is no “animal smell” as Alpaca fibers bear no lanolin. The absence of lanolin also makes the alpaca fibers hypoallergenic. This also means the fibers do not repel water … which is fine unless you want a “water-proof” quilt or live in the rainy Pacific Northwest and have no barn for your herd. J
- Processing alpaca fibers is very similar to the same processing procedures used for wool. Alpaca batting is needle-punched and has a scrim. Both of these features make the product very easy to work with on our longarm machines.
- When using alpaca batting in your quilting projects you will find less definition or relief created from the stitching designs in comparison to what you might find when quilting with other battings
- Battings made from alpaca fibers are available in cotton blends and poly blends as well as pure alpaca fibers and comes in a variety of natural colors both dark and light. We have two blends only.....Alpaca/Wool...60%/40% and Alpaca/Cotton...50%/50%. We do not blend with poly. One type of our Alpaca/Wool is a dark batting....blends of dark alpaca fibers and dark sheep wool.
Want to know more about all kinds of batting? Be sure to check out a book written by Nancy Goldsworthy ... Flat or F
luffy. Nancy takes you through the basics of batting from production, content fibers, and how/when to use to create the desired effect on any given quilting product. Her style of writing is very easy to read and yet packed with lots of down-to-earth usable information.
ALPACA RANCH Posted on 24 Jul 12:11 , 0 comments
Question of the day: How can you tell an alpaca from a llama … the ears of the llama are banana shaped and the ears of the alpaca are straight.
Every year while on my way to Jan's house for our annual Statler Retreat I drive the back roads and go by an Alpaca Ranch. Every year I make a promise to myself.
"This is the year that I will finish a quilt using an Alpaca batting." It hasn't happened yet ... maybe this will be the year! And to that end pushing me a little more toward reaching my goal I did a little research about Alpacas and the products made from their fibers.
Alpacas come from the Andes Mountains of South America and have been domesticated by the native people for thousands of years. In fact there are no wild alpacas and they are a protected species by law. Similar to llamas in appearance, alpacas are members of the camel family. Alpacas were bred specifically for their fiber and you will find most people using the fibers for knitting and weaving.
Alpaca Batting Facts in a nutshell:
-
Alpaca fibers are soft and luxurious and are somewhat like hair being glossy in appearance. These qualities create a product that has wonderful drape making it a great fiber for use in garment construction.
-
Alpaca fibers are very dense causing them to be warmer than wool when used for clothing and bedding.
-
When the fibers get wet there is no “animal smell” as Alpaca fibers bear no lanolin. The absence of lanolin also makes the alpaca fibers hypoallergenic. This also means the fibers do not repel water … which is fine unless you want a “water-proof” quilt or live in the rainy Pacific Northwest and have no barn for your herd. J
-
Processing alpaca fibers is very similar to the same processing procedures used for wool. Alpaca batting is needle-punched and has a scrim. Both of these features make the product very easy to work with on our longarm machines.
-
When using alpaca batting in your quilting projects you will find less definition or relief created from the stitching designs in comparison to what you might find when quilting with other battings
-
Battings made from alpaca fibers are available in cotton blends and poly blends as well as pure alpaca fibers and comes in a variety of natural colors both dark and light.
-
SNUGGLY WARM Posted on 19 Jan 23:10 , 0 comments
How many of you wash your quilts? Most of my quilts have never been washed. Most of them are class/booth samples and spend most of their lives folded on the shelf, traveling in a suitcase from shop to show, or hanging in a shop to advertise a class. But in the recent move even with careful packing it was obvious some of my quilts needed to be laundered. And what better opportunity to run the new washer/dryer set-up through it's paces. Let's just see what how well they do with a quilt.
First I chose a quilt that was soon to be retired to bedroom use. Sounds kind of funny to think I have 125+ quilts and few of them can actually be used on the bed, doesn't it. LOL
My rule of thumb is ... if the fabric in the quilt has already been pre-washed on the same settings as you would use for any regular cotton fabric garment, then those same settings should be okay for washing the quilt. Normal wash cycle (warm/warm) and normal dry cycle (warm). The front loading washers are wonderful for washing quilts without doing any damage. I might be re-thinking the process if I were using a top-load washer with the agitation function. When I washed quilts years ago in my top loader, I would fill the tub and then stop the cycle, agitate by hand, and then fast forward to the spin/rinse cycle.
In my "never washing quilts" frame of mind I had forgotten the old-fashioned crinkledy luxurious softness that you discover when you remove the quilt from the dryer all fresh and warm. Most of my quilts are filled with the 80/20 blend from the Warm Company. I love the warmth and the lightness I get with my quilts using this batting.
And so my morning started with the UPS man delivering my brand new purple sherpa lined slippers (that I got on sale!) a venti sized hazlenut latte straight from my kitchen, and snuggle time in a soft freshly warm-from-the-dryer quilt as I watched the snow falling outside my window. How can it get any better than that?
luffy. Nancy takes you through the basics of batting from production, content fibers, and how/when to use to create the desired effect on any given quilting product. Her style of writing is very easy to read and yet packed with lots of down-to-earth usable information.
