Eye of the Storm – 1

I bought myself a PDF Bargello pattern called Eye of the Storm (and for October 2017 most patterns on THIS SITE are less 50%) and once I decided on my colour and found all the fabric needed, I could start cutting 2½” strips from all 6 colours. The quilt on the pattern was in purple but being from central South Africa, with very little rain, our storms are usually just masses of dust, so I chose browns.

The next step was to lay out my strips according to colour and sew these together, praying the whole time that one of the cats wouldn’t jump on my strips and distort the order.

I tried glue basting and it worked fantastic.  Once I’ve laid out a series of strips, I glue basted and heat set these and could go to the machine in one session and simply string piece the seams.  I am not too sure I would use it for ordinary blocks but for Bargello’s it is a definite must! Glue basting also helped when I woke up at 4 am and without waking up granddaughter, whose room is opposite of my sewing room, with the noise of the machine I could start getting strip sets ready.

Only on page 3 of the instructions and this is already the amount that I’ve sewn.  These are not necessarily all single strip sets, some are sets of 5 (all pinned together).