Quilting Techniques: Bargello, Easier than you think!

hi i'm tony and today we're going to learn about bargelo quilts so what is a bargello a a bargello style quilt is made with strips of fabric that when sewn together create the appearance of movement and design within the quilt it looks complicated but it's actually super super easy if you can sew a straight ish line you can learn how to make a bar jello quilt so today we're going to take a a jelly roll and we're going to turn it into a large lap quilt that's a bar jello you can use multiple things but go ahead and sew along with us by the end of the video you'll become an expert you'll be able to make a bar jello design you can create your own designs or pick up a pattern and follow the bargello pattern along with it it's all in the matter of the techniques and understanding what goes into it so grab your jelly roll and let's get sewing the jelly roll i'm going to be working with today is a standard regular size jelly roll 40 strips wide you can use a 20 strip jelly roll but remember it's going to be half the size of the one that i'm working with today so the first thing you want to do is open your jelly roll and sometimes this plastic it's a little hard to open so we take a seam ripper there we go now you will need a really really good seam ripper for bargellos this is my preferred seam ripper the seam fix with the eraser on top to get rid of all of those stubborn little tiny threads all right so let's open up my jelly roll oh there's nothing like opening a fresh jelly roll to do something with it all right now a lot of jelly rolls will have 20 different fabrics two strips of each fabric it's exactly what mine has so i have two strips of each fabric inside my jelly roll now in addition to being a regular jelly roll my fabrics are also very so it is a um the variegated so it actually has a lighter color that goes into the darker color so it has the color change within it which is going to make my bargello look really really cool and look like i cut up a whole bunch of little pieces of little colors but i actually didn't but any jelly roll will work as long as you have 20 different colors and of course the smaller jelly rolls have that step number one if you have 40 strips and two of each strip we need to decide to lay it out so i'm going to separate into two separate stacks so whenever i combine my strips together i want to make sure that i'm doing it in groups of 20 and that's just going to be a lot more manageable you can do it in one entire huge strip of 40 but the 20 just makes it a lot more manageable all right so we're separate i'm separating it out after i do this i need to decide the order that i want my colors if you have a jelly roll already prepared great the manufacturer of that fabric probably already told you what they want that you know order to be or what they suggest the order to be but you don't have to take that order you can put it in any order that you want for your jelly roll so i'm going to finish doing this and then i'm going to lay out my jelly roll and show you my preferred layout for these colors you know what i'm just going to go with what was in the order of the jelly roll because these batiks flow in together so well i'm just gonna do that so what we need to decide now is the so we've decided our order so now we have to decide number one to 20. now in this case remember i have a variegated so it goes from one color to the next color in my strip so i want to make sure that when i'm laying these out that my light part of the variegated all goes towards one side and the dark goes towards the other side and i'm laying these out just like that now what we're going to do for the next step is strip piece so we're literally just going to sew this entire thing together so strip to strip to strip to strip to strip that's all i'm doing and when i lay it out it's just an easy way to remember the order so that whenever i sew it i'm going to grab the bottom two sew them together then there's two ways you can do this you can grab the next one so if i sew these two together i can grab the next one sew it next one so next one sew it and have one large one all the way down whoops this one oh there's a few that i reversed look at that see it's important to pay attention to the colors there we are let's i was just moving right along and totally didn't pay attention like i told you to pay attention all right so two ways you can have one big group and just continue to sew a single strip to to the entire group or you can group them so you can sew them two at a time and then when they're all sewn sew them together four at a time and then when they're all sewn eight at a time until you get all 20 pieces sewn together in one large conglomeration now if you've ever done a jelly roll race this is basically what you're doing you are basically just sewing together all of these strips so it's going to look like one really cool massive quilt so i'm going to go ahead and sew these together and then come back and then we're going to talk about ways to iron your seams and why and with the power of video it's sewn together so i have all 20 of my strips sewn together using a quarter inch seam i forgot to mention that before quarter inch seam when you're sewing your strips together so once you decide your order sew them all together just do the first 20 remember we set the other 20 aside after you watch the entire video and you start to design your bargello quilt then you can decide if you want to do anything with those 20 in the same order or if you want to do something a little different uh so the next step is we're going to set up our layout for our design work um now ironing i mentioned that i talk about ironing now i ironed all of my seams up so every single one of my seams is ironed up you can iron them up you can iron them down just make sure every single one of your seams is in the exact same direction that is extremely important whenever you decide what you're doing with your seams um do not iron them open do not go all any which way one direction up or down and that is important because we want to nest our seams whenever we're sewing them together if you're not sure what nesting seams is i do have a video i've linked down below um take a look at it at this point so you can understand why this ironing is important for the different directions uh yes let's do the next step so we're going to prepare this for our rotary cutting so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my entire 20 strips and i'm going to fold it in half this way so that my strips are going up and down now you notice whenever i ironed my strips they're all different sizes it doesn't this is fine don't worry about this as you're ironing your strips together you're going to have a little bit of variance and then we're going to fold it in half again there we are all right and then i'm going to take this and lay it out on my cutting mat and let's do the next step now with this step we want to make sure that we cut off the very end of it because we want to square this up so and i'm using my stripology squared up ruler to do this now here's the thing though we have to have at least an inch of each fabric on the end so you're not just squaring it up you're making sure that you have this fabric because remember when i said we're determining number 1 to 20 well this is what we're doing we're making sure that we have our numbers okay so that number 1 was at the top to number 20. so now let's square this up and i want to make sure so let's find the fabric that is the shortest okay it is this one right here so i'm going to square it up to that one right there and let's line this up and cut now if you do the second set of strips of 20 strips the same exact order you do not need to have at least one inch for the second order and this is why because this is why we want to have that larger strip i'm going to open this up and i'm going to take my black sharpie pen and i'm going to label these one two three four five six seven eight nine oops sorry about that i bumped the camera 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20. there we go so i have all of my numbers for these fabrics laid out now i'm not done with this one so this is our numbers 1 to 20. now we can use this for design but first we have to get the rest of this prepared so now what we want to do is we want to turn this into a tube a complete tube so we want to come back over here and now i'm going to put right sides to right sides within my tube now sometimes i like to make the tube first and then cut off the ends but then i have to open this one up to write my numbers sometimes i do it this way and by doing this way we're just going to really straighten it up just trim it just a touch whenever we come back again all right so i'm going to do this and let's turn this into a tube and i'm making sure that i'm ironing my seam in the same direction as all of the others okay we have our tube so i'm going to take my entire tube and i'm going to flip it inside out so i can now see right sides again and an entire tube fantastic and then now this is the tricky part of laying your tube in a way that is easy to sew so what i like to do is make these areas nice and taut and line it up along a seam so i'm going to line it up along this seam right here shake it out lay it down to make sure everything is all lined up and then i'm going to fold this over one more time and it's all laid out now now as you see it's not quite squared up anymore so i do want to square it up now if you decided to make your tube first instead before you cut this part off that's perfectly fine at this point is when you would cut that part off so let me square this up here we are all right and that is trash now i'm going to cut the first one at this point if you are following along with me and you have your tube stop do not cut this next part do not continue forward with any more cutting and i will show you why at the next step when we do our design work so my my strips in this quilt i have made the decision that i'm going to have two inch finished squares so the entire quilt is just going to be two inch finished squares these are two and a half inch strips so this is already a two inch finished square so i'm going to cut my first one at a two and a half inch to show you exactly what we're doing so remember i have my numbers one two three so now i have a tube of all of my colors i can start whatever color i want at the very top so let's say if i do want to start with my number one remember i said the seam ripper is going to be a super super important thing for this video so we're going to find our number one and that's going to be my top right here in fact we move this down just a touch so i'm going to take this seam right here and open this seam so i'm going to take my seam ripper and just quickly open this up and i know i am not using my seam ripper with how my video how to use a seam ripper you may be surprised shows just because this is only a single seam and it's a little bit quicker all right now we're going to iron this down so that our seam is not um bent and then we're going to get rid of all of these threads now now i have my first one with my number one so let's do some design work and i will show you now what these numbers mean and how you can lay your bargello quilt out so there's two different kinds we have the graph paper and then we have the computer design using excel now the first way to design is using graph paper with colored pencils crayons markers whatever you have that can show the colorings and we're going to use these colors here as our cheat sheet so we can use some purples some pinks oranges yellows and so on the trick though is the numbers any time you see a1 you've got that so let's say if i want to go one two three four five six seven eight nine ten um i'm not going to go all the way to 20 just because i want to see the design and then i'm gonna move this one down four five six seven eight nine so this is going to be number 20 coming up and then i'm gonna do this again one two three four five six seven eight so this will be 2019 and then maybe i want to come back up again let's say if i want to do peaks and valleys you can even then take your ones and then go down maybe go across and then you can see the movement of your your blocks as you're doing it the colored pencils are to give you an idea so here's some some purple so one two three i'm gonna say is the general purple so there's my general purple one two three the number one thing that you care about is what number is starting up here and if you go beyond your 20 are you getting numbers from someplace else to fill in here so then here's my one two three so you can start to see some of the movement four is going to be a pink so four five six are all kinds of pinks because i only have twelve cray twelve um uh colored pencils in this chart so you can kind of see the way that it's moving and the way that it's flowing and and then that is how you can do it with graph paper let's say if you want to do something a little bit more technical let's say if you don't like that these colors don't show exactly what you want you want a little bit more variety and you don't have a lot of pencils or colored pencils or crayons or things to do that um or if you're a little bit more technical and you like the technical aspect of it you can always use a spreadsheet so spreadsheets are a great way of doing it now my quilt that i'm going to be making today that i've done all the sewing for and i'm going to be creating all the stuff i did using a spreadsheet online so you see all of my numbers are in here and then i did the colors so you see the number one two three now it's not going to be an exact color it's not going to have an exact representation but it's going to have a general flow so in this case i'm just going to do a standard flow and i had said before i went two inch finished squares so this is great this is also great i can do it on here with two inch finished squares but let's say if i want a true bar jello and i want it to seem like it's waving in the wind and i want everything to be thin and thick and thin and thick and how am i going to cut all of my strips in order to show those waves you can take your excel and make these columns bigger or smaller to show different widths there is a measurement tool in your in your spreadsheet that you can actually instead of having a nice square you can make it thin or you can make it thick and then that is how thick you cut your strips and that is why i didn't want you cutting your strips until you decide you decided on your design of what you're actually doing in my case i'm cutting every single strip two and a half inches so the next step is now to lay it out so i'm going to get all of my strips cut i'm going to get all my strips unbound so that i have the number 1 20 19 18 17 right on top but remember i've only done one half of my jelly roll so right here you see this number 20. so this right here this line right here is a whole new jelly roll next i'm sorry not whole jelly roll this line right here is the is my other half of my jelly roll so i've got half of my jelly roll here it's actually this here so this i have 16 strips so i can get 16 strips out of one jelly roll and then this part is my other jelly roll so what i'm gonna have to do is do my strips and then do another strip and then attach the other strip down for number 10 oh and look i can take number 10 because 11 is going to start right here and bring up and that's why i have my marker right here to let me know that uh excuse me this number 11 i can just take this one right here to start this one here and continue on and that's what this line right here is letting me know i can sew on the next strip then after that one so it is it's a little bit more math mine's a little bit more complicated my suggestion to you would be to get a basic design for your first one play around with your numbers play around with how it works and then you can start design now let's say if you don't want to design your own if you want to look at an existing pattern so the existing patterns will use letters and numbers corresponding to what you have here make your cheat sheet your cheat sheet will be invaluable for reading what you're doing and how you're doing it and that is how you can make all those amazing complicated bargellos a lot of times all they're doing is taking it apart at one area and then re re-sewing it together in order to make all the different designs on there so as long as you're taking it apart and putting it together again you can do as whatever you want with your designs but for the rest of this uh tutorial i'm just going to show you some basic stuff with this and let's play with my design wall and i can show you the way that this lays out compared to what you see here so i have been laying all of my strips like i said i cut everything out i used the design numbers these numbers that are right here at the tops these are the ones that um oh sorry i was just looking to make sure this was hanging up correctly these squares at the very top these are the numbers so in my numbered thing i have number one number 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 and it's going to keep on going down according to the numbers that i have at the top for my strips now if you're doing a super complicated one i would actually have a design wall with you while you're doing your bargello and as you finish that super complicated strip and you know everything is good hang it up and move to the next one if you do not have a design wall or if you're interested in making your own of how to do it i do have a tutorial on how to make your own design wall or where you can buy them i'll make sure i put that link down below here of where you can buy them as well in case you just don't want to go look at that design wall video but you're interested in it and you're like oh wait no i know what design walls are i definitely want one um it is just a cool thing all right so once i have all of my strips done now comes the next step because if you remember we ironed all of our strips the same direction so as you like my movement because of the different colors i was playing with all the different things that looks really cool i didn't even notice that i did that how it goes light to dark to light again so it's really almost a cascading for all sorts of all sorts of things i just got really excited and dropped it down um all right so every single one of my strips remember i ironed everything up so all of my strips are ironed up so how am i gonna nest these seams they're all going in the same direction well i'm gonna re-iron them so this one right here is my strip number one i'm going to take my strip number two down and i'm going to iron my seams in the opposite direction and then hang it back up again and i'm going to keep on skipping and then ironing them in opposite directions until everything comes together it really is as easy as that it it really is that easy so i'm going to go ahead and get to ironing and then i'm gonna get to sewing them together remember nesting seams if you're not sure about nesting seams take a look at the video down below um and it was all just come together i can't now i see it in the actual video i'm like wait this is it's like blocked with a different cup i'm kind of curious how this is going to look and what it's going to turn out like this is really different like i may change some things i don't know i got to look at this i gotta look at this so i will i'll come back with my finished quilt and we'll see what it looks like together i'm excited and with the magic video it's done now you may notice that there is a block of color over here that's kind of different and then there are blocks of colors down there that are different now i noticed this when i was putting everything up on my design while remember i said that i may change some things because it looked different i did i completely changed around some things i undid some stuff i resewed some things together and i have a a bit different of a quilt that i had when i first started now it's still not right though because there is i use the variegated fabrics so it goes from the one color to the next color and i didn't take that into account whenever i was designing my bargello so i have learned something new today um but i'm still going to finish this i'm not going to completely take this apart and completely redo it i'm going to finish this i'm going to pretend like i did it on purpose and i'm going to have a reason behind it and i don't know what that reason right now is but that's what you do whenever you quilt right you fix it or you leave it and you accept it and you act like you meant that all along but yeah so bargello quilts they are amazing and easy and awesome and if you have variegated fabric be careful with that uh okay so let's talk some some patterns so i talked about um now you know the technique now let's take a look at some patterns um once you have the technique and you understand what goes into making bargellos in your toolbox then you can start looking at some of the really cool patterns uh link down below i have a few of my recommended easy starter patterns so if this is your first step into bargello's take a look at those first do one or two of those and then then you can start getting into some of these so these are some of my favorite books that i love for bargello's you've got the twist and turn bargello quilts and more twists and turns look at some of those designs they're really amazing these books are pretty easy to to read they have charts in here for all of your numbers the twist and turns actually have the numbers in there for the actual patterns so it follows along with exactly what we were talking about now they do talk about different sizes of strips that you need to cut and what you need to do within those strips because when we talked about how you cut those strips depends upon how wide or thin your rows are and then we also have the annie's bargello quilts and beyond now i'm going to put links to all these down below this is another one it's super easy super nice um it's really easy to read the only thing that you're gonna have to add to this one is they have letters instead of numbers and they don't necessarily put they only have the starting one they don't necessarily put all the numbers in there so you may just want to write in their all of your numbers but my absolute favorite intermediate book of bargello quilting is the bargello quilts in motion this is this book is so easy to understand it is so easy to read it's by ruth and barry i've got the link down below um it is let me just pick a random look at that and that's they have different colors ways so they have all the different colors with all of the numbers of these what what they're calling them and then after that the pinup charts are even better they're colored they're the pin-up charts are colored so there's no mistakes of where everything is going and they're numbered so if you want a really good intermediate book that's a step up from the beginners i recommend this one and then you can start taking a look at all of the others once you get hooked on bar jellos you may never do another type of quilt again they are so much to make it's so much fun to make so yeah show me your barjello quilts i have a facebook group now called quite nerdy quilters uh the link is down below if you would like to join it is a fellowship of nerdy quilters so take a look at it show me your bar jellos let me show me the bar jellos you make i want to see them you can also ask questions in the group uh get some help whatever you need um and yeah hopefully you learn how to make bargello quilts today don't forget to like my facebook oh follow my youtube like this video follow my facebook instagram twitter and don't forget about twitch where iso live and you can interact with me you

Channel: Quiltoni

Views: 44,053

Keywords: thread, sewing, quilting, tutorial, sewing tutorial, educational, how to, how to sew, sewing lesson, famore, seam, how to make, pattern, matching, patterns, designs, pictures, quilt basics, quilting basics, basics, bargello, rainbow, movement, flow, easy, bargello quilts, how to bargello, easy sewing, easy quilting

Id: XJ3U4uJkzh0

Length: 29min 16sec (1756 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020