Twelve Months of Bargello – Small Bargello Projects from Lucinda Gregory Rice

Lucinda Gregory Rice has just come out with a series of twelve one page Bargello needlepoint projects, available directly from her.

The series has a different Bargello design for each month. They are all shaped. Some, like February’s heart or December’s ornament, are shapes you’d find in other Bargello. Others, like June’s fish and August’s peach, are very unusual. It’s a fantastic collection.

On her site there are some delightful pictures of the finished models. February and December are finished as free-from ornaments. July’s is a soft ornament. April’s is stitched on Aida clolth (yes, cross stitchers, you can do Bargello too). October’s is a covered button put on a pumpkin-shaped pincushion;it’s my favorite).

Lucinda has a couple of ideas if you want to make a sampler. She suggests that “You could either make it like an advent calendar so they would be attachable or make them permanent. I’m working on a topper for that and the border to offset them. This could be stitched on a linen cross stitch fabric with floss to simulate a traditional sampler.”

What I love about them is their small, uniform size. As Lucinda suggests, this means you can use them in so many different ways. She “used Kaisercraft’s pertutal calendar, as a use for the monthly bargello’s.
I wanted a fun home decor item that could stay out all year and all you have to do
is change the tags and bargellos. Each months name tag is color co-ordinated to go with the month.”

The cards have full color charts, and instructions for making the project. Rice’s approach to Bargello is innovative and mixes stitches of different lengths to make the shapes.

I’m currently working on the leaf and doing it in olive green and orange. I’m planning on making it into a diamond-shaped ornament and will do the background in, I think Very Velvet in T Stitch. I’m going to use metallic for the outline and fold it over. They don’t take long to stitch and they make great take-along projects.

You can order the charts directly through the link in the first paragraph.