Bargello Tips

Last Tuesday I had a few guild members over to my place to start working on the guilds Bargello raffle quilt.  We were all surprised at just how much we got accomplished in 6 hours. The pattern we are using is called Surf Song designed by Eileen Wright.   I had all the fabrics cut into 2 1/2" strips before they came over and all labelled Fabric 1 to 24.  The pattern suggested making a sheet with all the fabric numbers and a sample of the fabric for a quick reference. That turned out to be very handy.

We had 3 sewing and were able to get all 7 tubes with 24 fabrics sewn together fairly quickly, once we all passed the quality control test and had everyone using the same weight of thread so the fabric tubes were coming out the same size.  We had two irons going and one person organizing.

Then I started cutting the tubes in widths according to the pattern but I came up with the idea to first printed out labels (yes I have to use labels or I would be lost).   Each label had the row number, the width the fabric strip that needed to be cut and the number of the fabric that will be at the top of that row.  I would grab a label and cut the 2 strips according to the size on it and then pin it to the strips. Our pattern called for two strips to make on complete row.  It was then sewn into a tube and picked apart ( looping and de-looping) at the top seam of the fabric numbers on the label.  Ta da....a row done.  I only cut one wrong and we only had a bit of picking to do when sewing the rows together. If you have made a Bargello you know how easily it is to make a mistake.

Here is a close up of the labels and rows 44 to 48 sewn together.

So a big THANK YOU to Audrey, Eileen, Gail, Robin and Lori for helping with the Bargello quilt.  I really enjoyed the day.

I kept 11 rows to loop and de-loop and probably to no ones surprise I have all the rows sewn together.

I can hardly wait to see this one finished!!!