"Agata's quilt" - gray and blue bargello

This one has been hanging around for a while now. I started thinking about it last fall - and wanted to get the top made and finished up quickly. It hasn’t been very quick.

I had one caveat. I didn’t want to actually go and spend money on a backing. I wanted to use up what I had. (Been listening to Dave Ramsey lately while sewing!) So I was a bit stumped as what to do with the backing.

Geometrics nr. 14

I knew I could piece the backing - and in fact, that is what I was going to do. But how? Then I made nr. 14 Geometrics - and I really loved how easy it was and how cool it looked.

I’ve also had a huge number of shirts given to me lately - so I decided, in spite of the extra work, to make a backing in the style of the Geometrics 14. I wondered a little about the size of the rectangular pieces to make, but went with what my ruler is - a 6.5” width - just like the blocks I made. However, these were not going to be pieced blocks - just cut pieces. I decided to cut them 6.5” wide and an even 10” long (not 10.5”).

I planned on 11 down.

And so I cut and cut.

It was tedious, yes…but I was able to actually go through a fair number of shirts that I had already cut up and were not in my blue boxes. (I am not going to do another blue series right now even though I’ve probably garnered another 2 or 3 boxes of cut up upcycled blues lately - all from our local freecycle group and people in it that I’ve gotten to know from that).

Anyway, once again, I offset each row - meaning that there were no seams to match. I really liked that, and appreciated it even more since I was going to use it for a backing. It helps reduce the thickness on the back as I quilted. I was inspired to go ahead and do this, in part, by Karen Brown’s #afterquilt idea - even though this wasn’t really leftover fabrics. A pieced backing isn’t new to me - just haven’t done one this complicated before. I just hoped I could get the top placed on there straight enough so it wouldn’t look too strange.

I placed them randomly. The idea of trying to make a bargello out of the back made my head hurt, so I went with the random. If you see colors too close to each other - that’s how it is with random. I tried to spread them out…but truly random does result in some close or right next to each other.

What I did was make up a few rows of strips - some with the plain 11 blocks and some with the 10 blocks and the half blocks on the top and bottom and then sewed them together to make a group. I ended up having too many whites leftover, so I had to go and find a couple more shirts to cut up or else I would have had a couple of rows of almost all white.

The layout here was 11 blocks down and 17 rows across. I made every other row a “half block drop” meaning I put a 5”x6.5” piece on the top and bottom of 10 full sized pieces. That made the seams off set.

Once I had the backing done - as I had finished the top a while ago - I was ready to tackle it.

And so I did. When I sandwiched it, I tried extra hard to keep things straight - at least on the one side. I was hoping if I could make it straight as I could along one edge, then hopefully the other edge would be straight as well.

I could tell that I was a little bit off by the time I came to the second edge - as you can see the line of the backing is a bit more generous along the one edge than the other. But this was only sandwiching - not yet quilting, so I didn’t know for sure - as I only tend to “pre trim” as it’s not been quilted yet.

Then I took it to my machine and quilted it. I took it easy and did it over parts of two days. I was working on some other projects in my main floor of my house during this time and didn’t get to my sewing room til late afternoon.

I just quilt all these bargellos of this style the same way - along the design of the color. It is easy to do with the walking foot and I believe it emphasizes the design/colors.

Now when you see this, does it look like “all upcycleds” to you? From a distance, no. Not at all. At least I don’t think so.

Up close. Well, yes. Very much so.

And how did that backing turn out? I’ll let you decide.

It’s not perfect along the edges, but then I didn’t really expect it to be. But since my expectations were so low, I’m super pleased with how it turned out on the back!

What do you think? I like it! I can’t say that I’m ready to do it again right away, but for a quilt that I don’t want to spend any more on at all and I don’t have the appropriate backing fabric - or a big chunk of it - it’s definitely a possibility for the future!

And this is how it looks from the other angle. It just depends how you want to put it on your bed.

I bound it with leftover 2.5” strips that I cut. Also - this is a nice big quilt - about 96”x98” according to Eileen Wright, but I had enough extra, so I added two more rows to the width (which I then turned to become the length, so it was actually probably about 100”x98” before quilting). But because I prefer the look of the hump and waves like this, it is now about 98” wide by about 100” long. I didn’t measure after quilting and washing though. I don’t know how much it lost in the process of quilting/washing.

The quilt roll:

Sometimes I like to leave the quilts hanging on the line for passing cars to see should they look. But this one - I didn’t. It is committed to someone else and if it was stolen off the line, I’d be devastated. So, this one, while I loved looking at it, did not stay on the line long at all.

Has that ever happened to me, by the way? (had a quilt stolen off my line) No. Not yet. But we have had stuff stolen from our yard at least 17 times. I’ve quit counting at this point, actually. I quit counting many years ago in fact. I just try to be careful. If they stole a charity quilt…well…so be it. If they stole an undesignated quilt - well, too bad, but not devasting. However, if they stole something I have already committed to someone…that would be tough. While I like to sew, I don’t like to “redo” something.

And if you’ve been reading here, you know that this is the pattern, Surf Song, by Eileen Wright, found in her book Twist and Turn Bargello. You can get it from Amazon here. That link is an affiliate link, which means we get a tiny bit of money off the sale of this book should you buy it (at no cost to you).

I don’t know how many time I’ve made this pattern…but lots. It is good for these upcycleds because I can usually get 7-2.5” strips from my upcycled shirts, which is what the pattern calls for - 24 fabrics, 7 strips of each one.

And that’s it for this quilt. Soon it will be on its way to its new owner. I hope she loves it as much as I have enjoyed creating something beautiful out of mostly unwanted shirts.

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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