Cool bargello technique

    I don't do a lot of traditional type quilting/piecing, but when I see a technique like this I have to try it! I actually saw it (and tried it) more than 20 years ago first, no idea where... that was before too much internet was happening! Then a few years ago I set out to make a tutorial, and forgot a couple of the most important photos, and it took until now to make another one. There are lots of other bargello techniques out there too! I like how they can look like northern lights. 
    It's another 'very little math' way to make a quilt top/background. It always makes me laugh that I have so many of these when I don't mind the math at all 😂 I am pretty impatient though, so that must be why....
    Anyway, this is so cool! I learned a few things, which I do every time. So now you have the benefit of me trying this three times, and hopefully working out a few of the bugs! 

First, I chose 8 fabrics ranging from light to dark. You can use as many as you want! I also added a purplish one that fits into the value gradation, but not the color. I cut mine into 2 1/2" x wof (width of fabric) strips, and there are two of each except the darkest and the lightest. (They can also be any width, but too skinny will cause trouble...more later) Due to the seams and the process, you lose a lot in both directions, but especially left to right, more about that in a bit. Then I stitched them together as shown. Light to dark, then back to light. Only one side gets the lightest strip, doesn't matter which. 

    Super important thing #1: I wanted the light to end up in the middle, so I put the DARK in the middle for this step, it gets reversed! (If you were making a larger quilt, you could do more repetitions of the dark and light, hopefully that will make sense soon. 

    Now for the scary part! You can lay this out with a string to get your line, but you are going to cut through this whole piece something like this. Super important thing #2: This need to be done upside down from how you want it to end up. So, if you care (it might not matter to you) that's something to keep in mind. I wanted my curve to start at the bottom left and end at the top right, so I had to flip that upside down in my mind. Or you can sketch it digitally or on paper also. You want a very gentle curve, nothing too dramatic. (mine might be a bit dramatic still...) It's going to get very squished from left to right. 

Now you are going to take the bottom chunk and stitch it to the top chunk. This is why you only needed one light strip, now it's in the center. I had to photograph this one sideways 😅

The next step is to cut this into strips, parallel to the straight edges, perpendicular to the seams. You can do them all the same width if you want, or you can vary them. I went back and forth between 1 1/4" and 1 3/4" in 1/8" increments, or at least mostly.... Do this all the way across. 

Here's where the magic happens! Now you are going to slide each strip down to the same line. A giant cutting mat helps for this step, but it's not necessary. Keep going until all of the strips are pushed down to that line. The strips are pointy at the end, so for now just line up the tips!

Cool right? Now 'all' you have to do is stitch them back together. I found a few things that helped this step. One, look for spots that are either not enough change from one to the next, or too much, so that a fabric isn't even touching its matching one on the next strip. Keeping your curve gentle will minimize this issue, as well as not cutting your original strips too skinny. You can scooch the strips around however you want at this point. But if you do anything too dramatic, you will lose more off the top and the bottom when you straighten the edges. 

    The first picture below has a few strips in the middle that don't change much, so I scooched a couple of them up a bit. The second has one with too much change, you want matching fabrics to touch at least a little! (from my second version of this technique) Again, this has to do with how you cut the curve in the first place. The first one must have had too much of a flat spot, and the one in the second photo had too steep of a curve. But I just had to scooch one of those also. The third photo shows my first one 20 years ago where I didn't notice until it was too late! Blurry ancient photo, but if you look close you can see at least one spot where the line of purple is interrupted. I did the colors a bit differently on that one also, the method I did this week isn't the only option!
    In the last photo in this section, I show how I used chalk pencils to add a couple of registration marks on each pair of strips. This helped tremendously in attaching them together as you can't really go by the ends. 

All stitched together, and muuuch narrower! If I averaged 1 1/2" inch strips, I lost 1/2" off each in seam allowances, so a total of a third of the width. It actually went from 44" to about 24", so that's even more than a third, I must have had fat seam allowances... It will lose some on the top and bottom as well, since it has to be squared up. That started at 28" (14 times 2" finished strips) and looks like it will be about 24" after straightening the jagged edges. So my giant rectangle became a square! It loses a much smaller percentage from top to bottom. I was wishing I had used more dark strips, as those are what I'm losing the most of since they end up more at the top and bottom. And again, you don't have to do this arrangement of dark/light, that's just what I did. 

 I think my current one will get a raven, but I still have to finish it. I made this raven a few years ago partly from silk flower petals, but I think he's too big, and the color looks worse in person. Below are a few pics from my last version. It got a Teresa Ascone panel added to the front of it. It looks like I cut all of those strips the same size, so you can see what that looks like as well. Weird lighting in the last pic; I think I still have that quilt, I'll have to take a better photo... ​

   It's an unusual but fun technique, and I'm sure there are lots of ways to vary it. You can piece your original strips if necessary, but then you may have to trim off a bit when cutting vertical strips if a seam lands in an inconvenient place. This is about as wide as you can make it with wof strips though. I'm sure I'll post a picture of the finished quilt, follow my newsletter (sidebar) if you aren't, so you see it!. And let me know if you try it! Happy sewing, Beret