I first discovered Bargello embroidery last year when I was looking for an embroidery project to do.
I've always loved the music and fashion from the 60s/70s and have always enjoyed sewing clothes inspired by these eras. This meant that I had accumulated a collection of sewing patterns and craft magazines from these decades over the years.
I decided in my embroidery inspiration search to look through my vintage Golden Hands craft magazines. I had bought a big bulk of these several years ago in a charity shop haul and every now and again I had turned to them for various craft projects.
What had completely escaped me until last year were these really cool embroidery stitch styles that were really striking on the front of this zigzag stitchery magazine, along with some similar embroidery designs in the magazine behind:
Both magazines had described this type of embroidery as Florentine embroidery. I was impressed by the striking, bold colours and was curious to see how this embroidery was done since it looked quite complex in the photos. Upon looking at the projects inside the magazine, I could see how easy it was to sew this kind of stitching with one single straight forward stitch onto tapestry canvas with tapestry wool by using a variety of colours and stitch placements.
I then searched the internet to find everything I could about Florentine embroidery. This is when I discovered Florentine was a stitch style and there were many other types such as flame and hungarian stitch, which all fell under one single term for this type of embroidery called Bargello.
It was at this point I discovered these amazing dream boots that were made in the early 1970s by American Embroiderer Erica Wilson using Bargello embroidery.
From that moment on, I was completely hooked! I started to create my own Bargello inspired projects and loved them so much that I wanted to share them with the world! This is when I decided to create Bargello-a-GoGo!
Since that day on, I'm continually coming up with new ideas and am designing bargello related kits and patterns to share with you all.
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