iBargello – book review

Julia Key H. Snyder, 2014, $42.00

Updated September 11, 2020.
With over 60 Bargello patterns, this book has by far the most Bargello of any book in print. That makes me very excited because the book is a great value.

The book is essentially a Bargello pattern book, something that has mostly been lacking. The introductory text is minimal, just one page. It some tips for seeing the patterns, a fantastic tip for Bargello as backgrounds (which I have to try), and a note about the charts.

If you don’t know how to stitch Bargello, this should be the second book you buy. You’ll want another book that will teach you about stitching Bargello.

Each pattern takes up one page. on it you will find the pattern, some notes, and the chart.

If you are a Bargello junkie, you’ll be delighted to find many patterns that are old friends. I was so happy to find many of the patterns in Elsa William’s ground-breaking Bargello book here, charted for a new generation.

While the charts for line patterns such as Domes & Spires are very clear, the majority of patterns in the book have several lines charted and that necessarily creates a problem.

The line patterns are clear because only one line is shown and it’s done with dark thick lines.

Patterns with several lines cannot be as clear. This is for several reasons:

The books are in black and white making one set of symbols very light grey lines with arrows. The arrows, while helpful, just create interference in this small size, it’s all made worse by a similar format to the graph lines. If the grid lines were thinner, the charts bigger and in color, this problem would not exist.

It isn’t a problem Julia could help. Every Bargello author has this issue. Many of the patterns need to be charted at large scales for them to make sense to the stitcher. `Books just don’t have the space needed.

But you can correct this easily when you want to stitch one of these patterns. Make an enlarged copy to put into your project bag. If you are still finding the lightest symbols hard to read, use a pen to color them in.

With this fix, you’ll love using this book.

iBargello has so many great ideas and by varying the colors, threads, and openings, you could be happy stitching these patterns the rest of your life.