This is a continuation of our earlier article on bargello quilts.

1-     Cut each fabric into 45-inch cross-grain strips.  For wall-hanging, I suggest to the strips to be 2 inches wide plus .5 inch for seam allowance.

2-     Arrange the strips into the most desirable flow that you want each peaks and valley to look.  This is a crucial part to determine how to colors work together and how each group will transit.

3-     Sew them together, quarter-inch seam allowance.  Now you should have a square patch of sewn strip.  If you select 20 different fabric, you should have a 40 in. x 40-45 in. in measurement.

4-     You can either cut this in half across all the strips or construct another one just like that (I suggest to construct another one just like that).

5-     Iron the 2 patches, both patches will have all the seams go in one direction, however, the direction of each patch MUST BE IN OPPOSITE OF EACH OTHER.  For example, patch One will have all the seams go from color group of green to color group of yellow, the other must have all the seams to go from yellow to green.  This will ensure the seams butting each other flat when the squares are sewn together (they will be sewn together like in the nine-patch pattern.

6-     For each patch, sew the 2 strips by the edges together to create a cylinder or a tube.  Cut off the uneven edges on both ends of the tubes and ready to assemble the final product.

7-     Cut the cylinders perpendicular to the sewn strips into many thinner cylinders.  Remember to alternate between the 2 patches.  You will have to decide how wide or narrow each thin cylinder will be since this affects how the quilt’s peaks and valleys will look.  If your original strips were all 2.5 inches (this by now should be on 2 inches wide after you sewed them all together), you cross- grain cut of the tubes should be anywhere from 1 inch to 3.5 inches.  A variety will give your quilt a more interesting look.  Thinner cut will give you sharper, pointier peaks, wider cut will give you softer, more gradual climb of the hills or valleys.

8-     Opening your tubes into strips by taking one seam on each tube.  Which seam to take off depends on how you want your bargello moves.  Pick one fabric as your focal point and decide how that fabric will move.  If you want it to move up, open the next tube by one seam lower than the first one.

9-     Sew these strips together and now, congratulation on your new Bargello quilt top.

• Marking appliqué design on the right side of fabric since we would hand stitch them from the right side, not like piecing that is done on the wrong side.
• If the appliqué piece is large enough, before stitching down the background, use the iron the crease the seam down.  If the pieces are small, use your thumb nail to crease the edges down.  This will help sharp, accurate shape of your design.
• If creasing the edge down is not possible, use the needle roll technique:  use the tip of your needle to turn the edge of the appliqué piece down, this is done only 1 stitch length at a time.
• Cut out mostly the background fabric under the appliqué piece if you want your quilt flat.  Stuff an extra piece of fabric under it if you want your design to be raised slightly higher.  This is done by cutting a small slit on the background under the appliqué then gently insert a piece of flannel that was cut the same shape as the appliqué shape, just a tad smaller.
• When your appliqué pieces are curvy, place them on the bias.  Bias cut helps the fabric from fraying.

The essence of bargello quilts is color combination.  The play of fabric patterns and colors determines how the quilts look.  Other than that, all you do is to cut strips, sew them together, cut them up crosswise to make new strips, and then sew these strips together for the final designing product.

Tools  and fabrics:

The instruction for this quilt top is based on the assumption that you are a modern quilter who owns rotary cutting tools and have experience of using them– a rotary cutter, mat and a 6×24 acrylic ruler.

The more fabric, the better your end result will be Fabrics need to be group into color families and the more finely shaded, the more intricate your quilt will look.  I typically choose from 20 to 35 different fabrics for a quilt.

You probably will need all values for each color group – dark, medium and light.  Small prints define the colors more, medium prints are often used for transitioning between color groups and large prints add interesting pops to the quilt.  Large prints are used seldom.

9 Steps to making a bargello quilt

1- High quality cutting tools is essential to the perfection of your quilt.  It also save you so much time, and we all need to make the best out of our precious little time for quilting.

The tow most trusted brands are Olfa rotary cutter and mat and Omnigrid ruler.  I The largest Olfa blade (16 mm diameter) has the most use for all type of cutting.

Olfa 24×36 matt is more expensive, but it’s easier to use.  This is why:  most blocks are cut first by cutting strips from the fabric.  This is done by folding the fabric in half lengthwise.  Then the fold line is placed on the bottom line of the mat ( measurement 0).  The width of this long folded rectangle is about 21 to 22 inches (assume most quilt fabrics are 42 to 44 inches wide).  So, if your mat is 24 inches wide, you will be able to see the measurement lines extended past both sides of the fabric, thus you can place your ruler based on the grid lines of the mat.

2- It’s easier to stack 2 to 4 different fabric on top of each other for each cut.  The blade has some “meat” to cut on.  Besides, you cut your time down by 2 or 3 times.

3- spraying fabric with starch will help to stabilize it.  This is good for cutting and also for sewing later.

High quality fabric (often cost twice of fabric you buy at Joann’s) last much longer.  Quilts made from average fabrics with regular use and wash last about 5 to 7 years, then it starts to loose its lustrous appearance and shows lots of wear and tear signs.  With proper care, quilts with high quality fabric lasts for ever.

1. Tight quilting pattern flattens the surface while large, loose quilt raises the surface.  You can use this principle to create more visual impact on your quilts.  For example, tight free motion quilting around a star and loose quilting on the star (just a few lines) will raise the star above the background.
2. Quilt from the center towards the outer edge.  This will help smoothing the fabric away.  Any extra bulge will be sent to the edge and corrected after the quilting process, before binding the quilt.
3. For binding, cut the strips twice the width of what you originally planned for, fold it in half lengthwise, press and bind the quilt.  The folded edge is turned under and no need to fold the edge of the binding any more.
4. To secure the quilt stitches on machine quilting, hold the top thread with your left hand, turn the sewing machine’s wheel with your right hand so that the needle will go down completely and when it come back, it will bring the bottom thread with it.  Tie these 2 threads to secure the stitches.
5. Use clear thread for quilting when your quilt has many different opposite colors or when you are unsure about what thread to choose.  Clear thread is good for wall hanging, but it might be a little too stiff for bed quilt.
6. Use neutral color thread for piecing, it will not be too obvious to any fabric choice.

• When sewing bias seams, place a piece of light tissue paper over the seams, this will help not stretching but stabilizing the seams.
• Always sew the intersections with the seams in opposite direction with each other (nine patch piecing for example).  The seams will “butt” against each other, forming a secure lock, thus creating perfect mating corners.
• Iron the seams towards the dark fabric so they are not visible from the top.
• For a perfect quarter-inch seam, tape s strip of mold skin ¼ inch to the right of the needle, this serves as a bridge for your fabric to ride against, the needle will run always a quarter inch away from that bridge, thus forming perfect quarter-inch seams.
• When drawing patterns on fabrics, extend the drawing line beyond the corner to ensure a sharp accurate point.
• If you are a serious quilter, invest in a high quality sewing machine such as Pfaff or Bernina.  They do enhance the quality of your work.  The Pfaff has built-in walking feet, which helps prevent stretching.  You do not need to buy top of the line model, you can even buy pre-own machines, but a good brand is always help.
• Opening up seam-allowance is not necessary.  It takes much more time to press and might weaken the seams.  Just press the seams to the dark side.
• To speed-up your process, prepare all the pieces at one time and then sew the units as in assembly line production:  sew all the similar units continuously.  You do not need even to lift the pressure foot and cut the thread.  Just feed them in one after the other then clip the thread to separate them afterward.
• If you do a lot of sewing, use in pre-wound bobbins, they do not cost much money but save a lot of time.  They last very long too.
• To piece two triangles together by the bias edge, cut them in the square shapes instead, put them together as if you would do with the triangles, and then draw a diagonal line across the top square, sew on that line and then trim off the excess.  This will help the bias line not stretched.
• When constructing a quilt top, try to keep the grain of all the pieces to be at the same direction.  This will help the quilt top flatter, thus the whole quilt will laid or hung better over all.