Blue Bargello

Have started working on my first bargello quilt. Holly's beautiful bargello in plaids was the first part of my inspiration. The other part came from Crazy Mom Quilts who is making monochrome quilts. I combined these two and decided to try to make a monocrome bargello.

My first thought was to use a lot of brown fabric. When I looked in my stash I found some intensly colored Kaffe Fassett printed fabrics in blue, and chose them as a starting point. Then I picked out fabric I think will complement the KF and started cutting it in 2.5" strips 17" long.

After cutting a lot of strips and joining them in rows of six, I had an audition. The overall impression was of blue and hints of purple. They were begging for something to liven them up. I tried adding a few yellow and orange strips for a contrast, and liked the effect of that.

So far I have 3 panels 30 strips long and 2" wide. I need at least 4 panels. This will make a laptop size if I add a border. Maybe I need to make the panels 36 strips long and add the 5th panel?
Can't wait to start cutting the panels into strips! The problem is, have to make decitions about size before I start doing that.

I am almost out of dark blue fabric by now and am considering to make the last one or two panels in yellow and orange with a few blue strips. So, this is a stashbuster! My "stash" was probably pittiful to begin with - the word is more of a consept than a real size I guess.

So, its decition time. Is it big enough yet to start cutting?