Yet another bargello!

I decided a couple of years ago to try to make one quilt a year for a couple who is in the ministry - gratis. Something special - something I think they would like. By now I’ve made several - (last year’s was the Alaskan Show-Off Quilt).

This year’s is for a friend who admires my bargellos every time she sees them. She and her husband taught in Christian colleges for years and years until the last one they taught in in central FL closed down - now they work (at least I know she does) for a different one with online grad classes (both have PhDs in English). I thought it was (past) time to make her/them a quilt.

She has always admired Surf Song - the quilt I’ve made multiple times from Eileen Wright’s book Twist and Turn Bargello. It’s my favorite “bed size quilt” in this book! I suppose it’s time for me to branch out a bit, though.

I knew that I wanted to make this for them this winter - and the color she chose was royal blue. The pattern calls for a secondary color and so she chose the aqua-ish colors. (I sent her pictures - choice was between aqua-ish and navy-ish).

I spent quite a while deciding on colors. That is kind of fun, though. I decided not to stress too much if they weren’t perfect. I saw a quilt the other day (bargello) and it appeared like they weren’t in perfect order from light to dark and I actually liked what appeared to be one out of place - made for a bit more interest.

Here are the fabrics in the second set of colors. I agonized quite a while with the order of the fourth and fifth ones over (from the left) in this picture. In the end I left them like this instead of putting the batik next to the darker one.

It’s been a while since I made this pattern - but I knew I needed 16 colors of one from light to dark and 8 of the other, light to dark. I put them on this paper to keep track. Later I saw that I had them completely reversed.

I wrote the numbers on top of what I did with a magic marker to make it bolder and kept this right beside my sewing machine.

You are supposed to sew it together so it makes a tube, but I find it somewhat harder and seems to not want to work well for me, so I just leave it flat and trim flat. I can fold it in half easily this way.

I put the top together on January 1. I suppose if you stayed up all night partying, then making a quilt top in a day sounds impossible. But it wasn’t. I already had the strip sets finished - did those a few days before. My Juki made it fast! Seriously. It’s my first time doing it with my Juki sewing machine. I am so impressed with how fast it went. Making 7 strip sets went together in a couple of hours using it since it can sew quickly!

So, here’s my progress!

About 9:30 am this is where I was:

I then took another picture at 10:30 or so:

Once it starts getting this size, I like to see the “hump” that shows up from the one direction:

Then about 11:30 I took this picture: Isn’t it cool looking?

Then I didn’t take any more pictures until the end. It was getting big and getting dark and I just wanted to finish. As it got bigger, it got harder to handle and actually it was slower. I had to stop for dinner and then other various things. But I finished it by I think it was about 8:30 that evening. Obviously I stopped many times in the afternoon. I was not nearly as efficient as the day went on - you can tell that. (I got phone calls and had to deal with some emails and other things on the computer.)

The last few strips I sewed together as a bunch and then sewed them on to the top.

It now looks like this: My husband took this one from his brand new “toy” - a drone - straight up - outside. :)

Here is how it looks inside the house. These are the colors of the quilt. Beautiful. Very blue (which was my goal!)

So now you know how I spent January 1!

Yes, I felt very accomplished at the end of the day! (And very excited to get it finished - I sent my friend several pictures to keep her updated as to progress.)

Hopefully the next time you’ll see this quilt, it will be quilted and hanging on the line!

Oh…the pattern? It’s here. This is an affiliate link to the book on Amazon should you want to get one for yourself.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

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Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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