Adventures in Alpaca batting!

About a year ago I decided to look into alpacas as another source of income. In my quest to learn as much as I could about these wonderful animals, I discovered alpaca batting! Being a quilter I just had to have some. I had read somethings online about alpaca batting some good, some bad, but no one I knew had ever used it before. At a friend's ranch in Loveland, CO I bought some alpaca batting but because it was expensive and special (at least to me) I didn't want to use it on any quilt. Finally, I decided that I couldn't save it forever and about a week ago I used it in a friendship block swap quilt.
It is a small lap quilt and I have twin size batting so I decided (it was midnight-ish) to double up the batting. Alpaca batting is warmer then wool, or so I was told, and they were not lying! I am hand quilting this quilt because I have yet to get my long arm, and let me tell you! Having double the alpaca batting in a lap quilt while quilting it, it is by far warmer then anything I have ever used before! I am lucky to live in the Colorado Mountains where it gets cold at night.
Now for some "technical talk"; in my research of the lovely alpaca batting, I found some reviews that stated the batting gets "fuzzies EVERYWHERE". My personal experience is that is not true. While basting this quilt, I was crawling on the batting, in black pants on my hands and knees and there was very little "fuzz" on my pants or on the floor. I also found that this batting is expensive, no lie there, it certainly is expensive, however I feel that it is worth it for the extra special people in your life. As far as washing goes, I have heard that machine washing will "ball" the batting, for that reason I am making a smaller "wall hanging" size quilt just to see if the batting will "ball" in the wash. I am using a blend of alpaca/wool batting at the moment from Pacafil. This is only the beginning of my alpaca batting "testing" :) Later I will be experimenting with 100% alpaca batting if I can find it!
I will keep everyone updated as my adventures in alpaca batting continue!

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