I have made one bargello quilt before using a pattern and read some articles about designing them, so just dived in boldly. I really like the way colours can be used in this style and also that they look much harder to make than they really are.
First steps - good old cutting and sticking. Handily, Hobbycraft sell pads of paper with lots of shades of one colour. I used orange and blue cut into 2cm strips and glued them horizontally to white card, grading them from light to dark. NB I usually use inches for patchwork but swopping to metric measurements is an easy way to make a design to scale. So if I have 2cm paper strips, I know I will need fabric strips that are 2" + seam allowances.
Then I cut the strips vertically - this time I varied the width, starting at 1cm and going up in increments of 1/4cm - and spent some time rearranging them and seeing what patterns emerged. At this point it is useful to label the strips so you don't have to keep checking the size.
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After a while, I realised I needed a lot more strips to see the whole design, and also to be able to compare different versions, so it was time to go digital and start to work in Illustrator. I will tell you how in the next post.
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