Llama Skirt

It all started with a notebook from a bargain bin at HomeGoods. This girly-pink, spiral-bound, could-be-a-journal seemed to wink at me to buy it; especially when I remembered I had fabric at home that would go with it splendidly.

I had bought one yard of this llama fabric in November of 2017 at the Houston Quilt Festival.

I'd intended to pair it with this skirt pattern I bought at the same time. It's odd how I am able to remember fabric and patterns from two years ago yet have a hard time remembering where I parked the car in the last ten minutes. Odd but true! This pattern has oh-so-cute designs and oh-so-inadequate directions. Fortunately I have been sewing for enough years that I can do my own thing and be successful. I invested a fair amount of time reading the pattern text to see if there was some new technique that I might learn. There was not. There were absolutely no diagrams to help out, either. But I muddled through and was able to achieve good results, anyway.

I chose View C which had trimmed pockets inset on either side of a central panel. Every little girl loves pockets. I picked a cute polka dot that had the green, white, pink, and turquoise as in the llama feature fabric. Every little girl loves polka dots. I used a scrap of turquoise on the upper edge to tie in that blue accent a bit more. (Alert: I found pattern directions on how to add trim to be wrong and pocket cutting directions to be reversed in terms of width and height.)

I used a flat fell seam throughout so there would be no raw seams to finish. This detail gave the garment the overall feel of a jean skirt. And for the hem, rather than turn it to the inside, I turned the hem to the right side so I could see to make that top stitching straighter.

The waist of the skirt had a yoke effect with a double casing. I put elastic only in the upper casing and the bulk was reduced. I could not tell from the instructions if one band of elastic or two was the pattern intent – the directions used the term waist and yoke interchangeably and furthermore I could not tell from the cover photo. I was happy with one length only. I chose ¾" width – the pattern did not specify. Once again, as at the hemline, I turned this yoke to the outside the better to see and control my top-stitching over the gathered portion.

The completed skirt came out cute and my granddaughter loved the accompanying llama notebook. She now has llama from her "gran-mmama". I will use this pattern again because I like the other design ideas. The big bow on View A is rather striking and I have had a granddaughter request for that version. Every little girls loves bows as well as pockets. I am confident adding the bow is "figure-out-able".

In surfing the web for this post I learned that a cria (from Spanish for "baby") is the name for a baby llama. I also found this poem by Ogden Nash.

The Lama

The one-l lama,

He's a priest;

The two-l llama,

He's a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn't any

Three-l lllama.