Bargello

My friend, Jan Castle, shared with me a quilt card she made using strips of paper. I need to try it as I love quilt type cards, but it reminded me of a technique I had done several years ago called Bargello. Bargello is actually a stitching technique or a term used for upholstery fabric where a flame pattern is used. To do it out of paper, you cut strips of different colors of solid or pattern paper and adhere them to another piece of paper.

You can do random stamping if you are using solid paper.

Next, you are going to cut strips again, but this time from the opposite direction, so you will end up with strips with small squares on it. I had used a liquid glue on this example, and I would not recommend that. If you have paper with adhesive already applied or can run the paper through a xyron machine, that would work much better. If you do use liquid and don't have it everywhere, little squares will fall off (ask me how I know!).

Once you have the strips cut, you then glue these strips to another piece of paper (so you end up with three layers of paper). You can create a flame pattern by adjusting the pattern formed on the strips or you can do a checkerboard by going up and down, up and down on the strip placement. Sorry I have not done a finished card, but I am not happy with the job the liquid glue did, both in holding down the square and also as the piece is wavy from the liquid glue.

I know this seems like a lot of trouble, but if you did several pieces at once and then cut small squares of your finished pieces, you can make several cards with it. You might want to add some metallic paper to make the finished piece look richer also.

I will try to do another piece (with the right kind of adhesive!) and also one with Jan's quilt technique.