Thank you for the help ladies, I appreciate it. I feel as though you've given me the confidence to try this quilt.

Not often, I know that problem stems from not having the fabric properly squared up. And the bow is usually in the fold area in the middle.

The above is good advice. I just finished a Barjello and the most important thing is alternating direction of rows and pressing one to the right and one to the left so when you butt them together they rock into a smooth seam.

thanks for all the tips... I have a trip around the world I'm going to be doing soon!

And how do you determine the "dark side" when it's bargello??




Yes, press them to the side, and keep pressing all the subsequent seams in that same direction.

If you check your pattern, it will tell you which way to iron the seams....mine is always press towards the even numbered fabrics.

For worry-free evenly stitched seams, use a walking foot, aka even feed foot.

That's what I was thinking.
If it's the first part of the process, sewing plain strips together, it could be one of or a combo of the way the strips were cut (which would have the bow in the middle if the fabric wasn't aligned properly at the time), and/or not reversing directions for each strip (which gives more of J curve towards one end).

I read this in a jelly roll book I bought and have started to use this method when cutting strips. It works for all size strips - bargellos too trust me it works!

"If you have strips that have been cut selvage to selvage(WOF) along the crosswise grain (which most are as it is easiest), just cut the strips in half on the fold. This works well for a number of reasons.

- it helps keep fabrics on-grain and eliminates the bowing or curving that may occur when fabrics of differing thread counts are used.
- You can get more fabric variation in your quilt design also.
- You can use fat quarters too
- some pre-cut jelly rolls don't have many multiples and this lends itself to more variation."
The above quote is taken from
Nancy J. Martin's Rolling Along - Easy Quilts from 2 1/2 strips ISBN:978-1-56477-841-3 p. 13.

I found out even in high end fabric the strips can curve when sewing the longer strips together.

Good luck and have fun