My Big Goof Up

     Now that I have your attention, I can share my frustration over my misfire. I loved the Blue Bargello quilt I made (now gone) and bought 2 jelly rolls (you need 2) to make another bargello. The Robert Kaufman Watercolor Blossoms roll does not have 2 of every strip (who knew?) so I spent a lot of time digging and finding replacement batik fabric to cut and substitute for those single ones. Ok, covered that before. I sewed the two jelly rolls into 2 sets of strip tubes after arranging them in the best gradation I could do. Ok. Then, covid intervened and cooled off the whole project. While recovering, I marked all the 19 cuts I had to make in the first tube. Because my brain was hazy, I measured once, drew lines on the fabric, marked off on the pattern for each size cut, measured again, numbered the strips with painters tape, and wrote the measurement on each top back of each strip in pencil. Thought I had it made.

    However, in my single focus to sew the strips in accurate pairs, then 2 pairs, etc. I moved each strip up one. In my befuddled state, I did not switch directions when I got to the narrowest strip. As a result, I ended up with one big diagonal. Arghhh! Now what? I have another whole jelly roll strip set hanging there. Did I just waste $$$ and time? Even the cat left the room in disgust. 

What the first half should have looked liked like in design
(this is the blue bargello)

What it actually looks like

    The pattern I am using is a free one, but no longer available and the person who wrote it disappeared from the internet. I love sewing bargello, but I don't understand how to design them to do what you want. I would love to know, but I could not find any relevant tutorial on the web. Using colored strips of paper to figure it out is beyond me. My friend, Elizabeth, always says work it out on graph paper. I hate that. Drawing every strip and coloring in hundreds of little boxes is time consuming and tedious for me.

The second strip set sewn

    After a sufficient time steaming and stewing, out came the graph paper and was taped together to make it bigger. I did not even know what I was doing. I used one box for 1" and tried to approximate all the widths of those 19 strips. I colored in most of them to get the idea. Then I looked at the pattern's second half to see what it was supposed to do but how to make it mesh with my Big Goof of the first part. I had to change sizes and order to make it move together.

Graph paper first half and second half

    Right now, I have the graph paper done. I have the second strip set done. I have the first part Big Goof sewn. So, I have to grab the courage to cut that second strip set and follow the graph paper. And hope I did not goof up when I was drawing it.