Fiber Arts Friday - Alpaca Edition

The last week of April my friend Dawn, from Kaiser Mommy, and her family came out to visit West Texas. Dawn's been buying alpaca yarn to use for her etsy shop and has been talking about possibly owning alpacas.

Since The Kaiser's second birthday was during the week of the visit, I decided a stuffed alpaca would be the perfect present. (I was always a bigger fan of stuffed animals than any other toys growing up.)

I found a pattern to make a stuffed lamb in the 2008 holiday issue of Martha Stewart Living:

I loved how the lamb stood up on its own and was still cuddly. After spending a couple of hours looking at alpacas online and sketching, I'd adjusted the pattern to look like this:

(My poor husband had to listen to 87 rounds of "Can you tell this is supposed to be an alpaca?" and "Does this neck look right?".)

I was lucky enough to find fabric that looked perfect (to me) for baby alpaca fleece:

Here's the final product:

Originally The Kaiser was not as interested in the alpaca as Dawn and I were (he was a much bigger fan of the T. the Train birthday card).

You can read Dawn's story of The Kaiser naming the alpaca here and find more Fiber Arts Fridays links here.