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Fire and Ice Bargello Wall Hanging – A Review

Hi!

I hope you had a lovely Easter break, and that you managed to fit in some sewing time too.  I took advantage of a few days off to check out another class from the CreativeSpark platform, and this was a fun one to try, and perfect if you have never tried the bargello quilt technique before.

I took Cindy Grisdela’s “Fire and Ice Bargello Wall Hanging” class, and it’s a quick and easy one too – she explains the steps clearly, and there’s plenty of written notes and photos as well, to guide you through this process of making bargello quilts, and this wall hanging quilt in particular.

Cindy’s class is centered around making her small wallhanging, and this is a good size project to start on, although, once you understand the technique, you can play around yourself, and make smaller bargello projects like table mats or runners, or go big and make full bed-sized quilts.

As Cindy demonstrates, making these bargello quilts is not a matter of cutting a bunch of teeny tiny pieces, but cutting strips, then cleverly manipulating those pieced strips into the bargello design.

Her “Fire and Ice” quilt uses a few bright prints, with a graduated black and white background, with stunning results.

You may however, choose to use different colours for yours, like these below, and Cindy’s tip about using contrasting colours is a good one, as you do want the design to really stand out.

She shared some ideas for keeping your strips organised, and this was especially helpful when it came to adding the borders too.

Piecing strip sets has never been so easy!

The trick comes with how you cut and position those strip sets, and Cindy shares a good method of how to do this in this class.

And Ta Dah! An exploded version of the strips, ready to be sewn together and finished.

I found how Cindy added her borders to be quite interesting.  She arranged the sides and top and bottom in such a way as to continue the movement and flow of the bargello design, and I thought this was a really pretty way to finish off this little quilt.

Cindy shared a couple of suggestions for how to quilt your bargello wall hanging, and showed a few examples of other finished bargello quilts too.  This green and purple quilt below was made to the same pattern as her black and white “Fire and Ice” class quilt, and you can see how dramatic an effect choosing different fabrics can have.

And a smaller version makes a lovely pieced table topper too.

This was a quick and easy class, and one I would recommend if you’re interested in learning the bargello quilt technique, as Cindy explained each step of the process quite clearly.

I do have one free “Fire and Ice Bargello Wall Hanging” class to give away this month too, courtesy of Cindy and Creative Spark.  To be in the running to win this, please leave me a comment below and let me know what colours you’d use in your own Bargello quilt – I’m interested to hear what you think! 🙂

Do take a minute and check out this class online too – you’ll find it at: https://creativespark.ctpub.com/courses/FireIceBargello

Enjoy your week!