Melitastitches4fun's Blog

This stitched design used both blues. It works! But, I must say, it happened again. I had a heck of a time following my own pattern. It didn’t help that my color markers were random. But, I finally decided it was better to work the dark red rows along the middle then do the light red above it before tackling the blues.

Liz provided great insights into Bargello. This was a fun project & the booklet will remain a great resource.

I finished the last of the two sections, 3 and 8, to place them in bookends. I enjoyed the project although I did find following the patterns more difficult than I expected probably because I was too distracted by work and by watching TV when I stitched. But, they turned out fine. It certainly wasn’t the instructions from Liz Morrow – they were clear and very detailed. It is a great resource on Bargello. And, I have been inspired to try my own small design now! That’s as much my goal for doing a project – learn & grow.

The pattern had either an M or a W depending on which way I inserted the design. Since I gave these to my husband, Bill aka William, it appears as follows:

I like the collage type frames & decided that these individual pieces would look great in one. And, it saves me a ton of money. Framers do excellent work but they are so expensive.

I still have 2 more square designs to stitch & they will fit in bookends! Yes, I still have more of them (I couldn’t resist the sale).

Sections 1 and 5 worked up quickly. Although again, I zoned out on Section 5 when I didn’t make the stitches of row 1 and row 2 the same stitch. But, the pattern is still staggered as it is supposed to be.

A couple of interesting things happened with this section. Liz’s booklet is very detailed and has great information to help you design. But apparently, I am just not in the right frame of mind to be following written instructions because I just realized that this was to teach a mirror image pattern. I read these directions when I started the section 2 weeks ago but once I got to the right side and read, “Feel free to do your own thing here!” – I sure did. It couldn’t be further from a mirror image.

And, when I filled the center diamond, I thought this pattern was fine.

I was stitching is horizontally & it seemed ok.

But, when I rotated it left as it is supposed to be displayed, it looked terrible!  The white stripe just popped right out & it became all I could see.

So, I had to carefully remove the white in the center diamonds. But, I liked the white, single stitch. Then, I replaced it with the darker thread used on the top & bottom stitch of the center diamond. And, now I am happier.

While I didn’t capture the spirit of the “mirror” image, I do like pattern on the right. I find it interesting that I do like this patter because I usually prefer symmetrical patterns but this is not symmetrical.

And, I’m not sure why but I think I like it better horizontally than vertically. What do you think?

I just thought that maybe this is linked to something I haven’t read about yet. So, I just flipped through the remaining chapters. I see that Section 5 is about staggered patterns and Section 8 is about overlapping patterns. I am quite sure this is an example of overlapping patterns. It has three parts unless the very top counts as a fourth. Even though the top has some denser red, it doesn’t seem heavier than the bottom probably because of the very top white area.