Island Batik Winter Wonderland Post #1 - Blue Bargello

I have definitely been in the mood to create Winter Wonderland quilts of late!  I've made three that I'll be posting this month as part of Island Batik Ambassador's Winter Wonderland!

This first project was made from a set of blue Island Batik strips.  I love blue and started thinking about what I could do with a fabulous gradation.  I though about doing a log cabin, but settled on a bargello quilt.  I haven't made a bargello since I was in high school.  Wow.  I've been quilting a long time!

So I started by sewing two strip sets in a gradation.  The first set had 8 gorgeous Island Batiks.

The second set had 6 strips.

I then sewed each set into a tube and cut them to different widths.

Then I cut the second set tube into strips the same width.  The next step was to rip out one seam in the right place to make the bargello work.

Here are the tubes all turned back into strips and ready to sew together.  Using different fabrics on teh top than on the bottom presented a challenge of how to connect them in the middle, but I'm really happy with the results.

Here is the table runner all sewn together before trimming.

And the final runner!  I decided this runner didn't need fancy quilted since it was so busy already.  So I quilted every other band of color in a simple up and down wiggle as shown in the photo below.

Here's the back!

Island Batik Ambassadors are all doing Winter Wonderland projects this month.  If you look at the Island Batik Ambassador Blog Roll on the side of my blog you can check them all out!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy