Search for a bargello quilt and nearly every guide starts with strips of cloth and a sewing machine. Our Wave pattern gets a similar look from squares. This post explains what bargello is, how quilters make it and how Wave differs.
What bargello is
Bargello began as needlework, not quilting.
Wikipedia describes it as “a type of needlepoint embroidery consisting of upright flat stitches laid in a mathematical pattern to create motifs” (Wikipedia, Bargello).
The name comes from “a series of chairs found in the Bargello palace in Florence, which have a ‘flame stitch’ pattern”. The museum lists its chairs as 17th century.
Wikipedia explains how the pattern forms. Bargello patterns appear “when vertical stitches are stepped, or offset vertically”. Traditional designs “use many hues of one colour, which produces intricate shading effects”. Each step is a small shift, and the shifts add up to a wave.
How quilters make a bargello quilt
Quilters borrowed the look.
Simply Quilting says bargello is “normally associated with 17th-century Florentine needlepoint embroidery”.
Quilters adapt it “using ‘strip sets’ of squares and rectangles arranged in rising and falling patterns” (Simply Quilting).
The method has these parts:
- The quilter numbers the fabrics, “to keep track of where each fabric should be in a design”.
- They often choose “a graded colour scheme, arranging the fabrics from pale through to dark”.
- They sew the strips into a tube, then unpick each ring at a different point. That way the pattern “undulates according to the plan”.
- Stepping “up or down by one fabric each time” gives “gentle undulations”. Stepping by half a strip “tends to smooth out the waves”.
The guide cuts its strips “2½in wide”. All of it needs a sewing machine, careful seams and matched joins.
The idea underneath
Bargello is about tone. Light cloth steps to dark cloth in small, even moves. The eye reads the steps as a wave, and the order from pale to dark matters more than the colour.
The quilting company APQS makes the same point about value, which is how light or dark a cloth is. It says “if you only use colors that are the same value, your quilt will look flat and uninteresting”. It also says a fabric’s value “can change, depending on what fabrics are next to it” (APQS).
How Wave works
Wave keeps the idea and drops the strips. The studio’s own line reads: “Bands of tone on the diagonal, the bargello way.”
The panel has 35 squares. Makers cut each square 6 × 6 cm, and 4 × 4 cm of it shows. Wave places the squares so that bands of light and dark run across the panel on the diagonal. A band is a run of squares of similar tone rather than a long strip.
Wave differs from a bargello quilt in these ways:
- A maker does not need a machine or a seam allowance. They lay the squares on a backing and stitch by hand.
- The cloth need not be one colour family. Wave works by tone. A box needs both light and dark cloth to show it.
Wave does not copy the stepped rise and fall of a strip-pieced bargello quilt. It uses the same idea of tone moving across the panel. The studio arranges 35 squares. A quilter can repeat a layout across a larger quilt, but the studio does not size one.
Try Wave with a box of cloth
- Cut your squares and photograph each cloth. The cutting guide explains how.
- Add the cloth to a box in the studio. A box that holds some pale cloth and some dark cloth gives Wave the most to work with.
- Open the Design tab and press Wave.
- Press Wave again for a new arrangement. Each press gives a different one.
- When one looks right, print the sheet at 100%. Each square on the sheet measures 4 cm.
- Lay the squares column by column on a backing cloth, and stitch rows of running stitch through them. The Help page has drawings for each step.
The studio also starts with a Sample box of real cloth. You can try Wave before you photograph any cloth.
More patterns
Wave is one of eleven. Chess and Centre are a checkerboard and a medallion in quilting. 11 Kantha patterns for 35 squares of cloth gives the quilting name for each of the eleven. For how the whole studio fits together, read how Kantha works.