Hey Everyone, welcome back to Story Time Monday.

A few years ago I was taking classes at Quilt University while I was living in the Australian Outback. There wasn’t a lot to do in the small mining town I lived in and so these classes kept me occupied most days. I took a couple of Bargello classes with Ruth Blanchet of Arbee Designs and at the end of one she asked me to test her newest Bargello design called Color Connections.

I of course said no problem I can test it. If I remember correctly I don’t think I had a lot of time to do it as I was between vacations and thought I can fit it in to my schedule.

This pattern called Color Connections was more advanced or at least looked it from the photo than what I had tackled before in the Bargello world. I was definitely up for the challenge.

I set to work picking my fabrics. Ruth had made her’s with 3 different colours and that is what I set out to do and then decided that two colours was the way to go and settled on teal and orange. These two colours make up my favourite complementary colour scheme.

There was a lot of cutting and sewing and cutting some more and then splitting apart at certain spots in the strip to make the different sections. Keeping track of it all was so much fun.

Finally the sections and strips were all in place and ready to sew into vertical rows. Here everything is pinned to my makeshift design wall – a sheet pegged to the curtain rod. It did the job.

Sections ready to be sewn into rows

Sewing the rows together took some time but oh so worth the time once it all came together and the two colours worked beautifully.

Sections sewn together into rows

Sewing all the vertical rows together was a lot of fun keeping everything in order. Thanks goodness the Bargello design was a staggered one and I didn’t have to match up all of those seams. Boy did it ever shrink in size – all the strips barely fit on the design wall when they were all individual pieces and then there was lots of room to spare once everything was sewn together. Those ¼″ seam allowances do add up.

Rows sewn together

Finishing off with the plain black border set the whole design off. The teal and orange just pop on the black background. The orange being a warm colour appears to jump right off the quilt while the teal being a cool colour recedes into the background.

Top complete

Quilting ended up being very simple with stitch in the ditch along all the rows and then a tight stipple in the black section which makes the Bargello design pop even more.

I have to say this is my most favourite Bargello I have made to date. It is also my sister’s favourite and I have promised it to her – she has the perfect wall in her sunroom for it.

Happy Quilting!