In my house growing up we had watermelon-colored Bargello pillows on our living room couch. My mom stitched them from wool and backed them in crushed velvet. I was fascinated by their ombre color changes.
Bargello was big in the 70’s when I was a kid, but then it fell out of favor and for the past few decades it’s been essentially forgotten as a craft. At least until recently when Brett Bara of the hip retail store and workshop space, Brooklyn Craft Company, stumbled upon a pile of Bargello books at The Strand, a used bookstore in the East Village, and became obsessed with bringing it back.
Landslide Clutch Kit
Rhiannon Earrings
Seven Wonders Wall Hanging
“It’s funny how Bargello is this obscure thing that even people who know about craft don’t know anything about,” she says. “That just feels wild that there’s anything that people don’t already know everything about.”
Flipping through the pages of those books and thinking the designs look interesting and “trippy,” she scrounged up supplies and decided to give Bargello a try.
“I got hooked on it instantly. It’s cool because it’s very fast to do. It’s pretty large scale. And I love that it’s all about color play. I really love color work so I got really into it.” She started teaching Bargello classes at Brooklyn Craft Company and was surprised, and happy, to see that others shared her enthusiasm. “They’d come to a class and be obsessed and hooked and come back to the store wanting to do more,” she says. Bara had a feeling she might be onto the next big 1970’s craft revival trend. Bargello was back.
A selection of tapesty wool.
We’ve seen it happen over the past few years with macramé, frame loom weaving, and needle punch. All of a sudden a craft that seemed extinct reappears, revived with new colors and new enthusiasm, shared on social media with new life. According to Bara, Bargello had massive potential.
For example, when she posted a Bargello project on the Brooklyn Craft Company Instagram feed, the posts got 17 times higher engagement than the rest of the feed’s photos. Soon, people were asking for Bargello patterns and supplies, but Bara and her staff realized there were no good resources available.
“There are no patterns that existed in the contemporary world. There are no books in print of Bargello patterns. There’s really no website for Bargello. It’s just lost in time.”
Bara’s entrepreneurial instinct kicked in; here was a market for a product that didn’t yet exist, and so she created it. She started by designing a kit to sell at Brooklyn Craft Company, launching in early 2018. When it got a great response, she expanded into a whole line of kits, and eventually created a whole new brand: Hello Bargello. Sales have been strong and Bara has now handed over the day-to-day of managing Brooklyn Craft Company to her business partner so she can focus on Hello Bargello full-time.
Bara used her experience teaching Bargello classes to inform the material choices for the kits. Traditionally Bargello is done on needlepoint canvas and at first that’s what she was using, but she quickly realized that the canvas’ edges fray, making it very difficult to finish. “I was actually feeling very limited by the types of projects I could make with that material,” she says. “The other thing was that every time I taught a class the number one thing people would say is, ‘what can you do with this other than make a pillow?’”
When her business partner suggested plastic canvas as an alternate substrate, Bara says it was a breakthrough moment that allowed her to create kits with much wider appeal. With plastic canvas she can design in three-dimensions and the projects are easy enough for even a beginner to complete successfully.
Each kit includes plastic canvas (some, like the pillow and zippered pouch, use needlepoint canvas), DMC tapestry wool, a tapestry needle, and an instruction booklet. Designs range from earrings, a handbag, a pillow, a wall hanging, a planter, and wall art.
Brett Bara
Kits are ideal for Bargello because the materials can be hard to source, especially tapestry wool which is challenging to find in stores. “People truly don’t know what needle to use and what surfaces to stitch on so I think that’s a big benefit of having a kit for sure,” she says. Hello Bargello is now also carrying a la carte supplies so customers can come back and stock up once they run out.
To help people learn Bargello, Bara created a library of short, step-by-step how-to videos on the Hello Bargello website. Her next project is to add a downloadable library of Bargello stitches, like the flame stitch and the serpentine, which right now are only available in vintage books. “I just want them to live online and be preserved. I don’t want them to be lost in the past,” she says.
Rumours Tissue Box Kit
Go Your Own Way Vase Kit
When it comes to aesthetics Bara looks to what’s trending in the design world at large, not just within the crafts industry, and works to apply those colors and concepts to the art direction, a process she’s been doing at Brooklyn Craft Company since the beginning. “Our customer base are urban people who don’t craft yet, but are kind of interested, but don’t know how to start. So we really try to appeal to them with a style that looks familiar and then have it be a craft instead of a handbag, for example,” she explains. In fact, the Landslide Clutch kit at Hello Bargello is directly inspired by the shape and hardware of a bag from the popular apparel store Madewell.
Instagram has been a key marketing tool for Hello Bargello. Bara does stitch-alongs in Stories which she says has been very effective. She also shows her fancy nail art manicures which she says always get good engagement. She shares pictures from vintage Bargello books and explains what the instructions were like. Then she shows her process of modernizing them for today’s crafter.
Until now Bara has really focused on direct-to-consumer sales, although she does have a limited range of kits available for wholesale. She says her biggest challenge right now is finding enough time to create all the new designs she’s been dreaming about. A new wall hanging kit just released and she’s hoping to do more accessories soon.
Bara is convinced that Bargello is going to be the next big crafting trend and I think she’s probably right. An ombre Bargello pillow or two would look pretty great on my couch right now.
What’s old is new again – love it! I still have my one and only bargello project from the late 70s and remember how much I enjoyed doing it. It was a Herrschner’s pillow kit… I see the company is still in business and sells a book of bargello patterns.
really old! I’m 65 and loved bargello as a child! I did have several books until about 3 yrs ago!
Clarifying my earlier comment… the book I mentioned is a collection of bargello knitting patterns, not the type of bargello that is done on a needlepoint canvas.
back in the 70’s my mom recovered our dining room chairs in bargello. She had to make 3 pieces for each chair. They looked great and were actually pretty durable.
I’m a quilter now and enjoy making bargello quilts.
Actually, the folks at Brooklyn Craft Company are incorrect when they say there are “no books in print on Bargello.” I know there is a book on Bargello un print because I wrote it. It’s a complete guide to stitching Bargello with over 30 projects.
In the book, you’ll learn not only how to stitch Bargello but there are also sections on using different kinds of thread (many threads and yarns can successfully be used for this technique), how to create original projects by using templates, and a section on solving common problems with Bargello.
Although there are plenty of projects you can do as is in the book, you also are given something these classes do not give you, the tools you need to create original projects.
The book is available at Amazon and in my Etsy store (napaneedlepoint). It can be ordered by any bookstore or needlework shop.
In addition to the book, Bargello Revisited, I also have several stand-alone projects or groups of projects that give even more ideas and instructions in Bargello.
I am currently at work on a second book on the subject.
That’s great, Janet. Thank you for sharing your book and patterns with us.
I didn’t realize Bargello needed to be revived as there have been many quilting books and patterns published over the past 20 years or more. Your article only focuses on the needlepoint technique and ignores other medium using this design style. Quilters are “makers” too.
You’re right. This article is a profile of one business and not a comprehensive look at bargello across all mediums.
The plural of medium is media
Well, I’m 81 and I still have all my bargello needlework books, around 20 including some pamphlets. When the Paternayan yarn company went out of business (I think!) it became difficult to find color runs of nice yarns in local shops. Elsa Williams book “Bargello Florentine Canvas Work” was my first introduction to this form of needlework and was published in 1967 by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. And yes, Janet Perry has been a stalwart member of the bargello needlework lovers group for many years. I eventually began knitting but now you are making me excited to do some bargello once again.
That’s great, Marcia. And I hope to still be crafting at 81 just like you.
Thanks for the shout-out, Marcia! Like you and so many others, I learned from the Elsa Williams book. I treasure my copy.
Have you tried Colonial Persian or Rainbow Persian for Bargello?
Keep stitching,
Janet
Hello Bargello is a fun and fresh approach to ‘reviving’ a familiar craft. So glad to see the energy being put into it and into any any technique that needs to show up again (weaving and macrame made a comeback too).
Brett Bara is down to earth and I’m glad you have featured her and her company.
I enjoy your newsletter all the time also 😁.
I discovered Hello Bargello a while back and I love Brett’s modern take on the craft! She’s super fun to follow on Instagram.
Funny — Bargello in Quilts has been going strong for nearly a decade now. Lots of articles and patterns in quilt magazines and books, many seen at quilt shows I’ve been to too!
I’m happy to see it’s live again in the other textile arts — although mayhap in much simpler versions than we can do on the big firld of any bedsized quilt, eh?
Great article, I’ve enjoyed the passion and determination. Congratulations.
Of course where I wrote ‘we can do on the big firld of any bedsized quilt’ I meant —
“we can do on the big *field* of any bedsized quilt”
(Big fingers, small buttons on phone’s keyboard!)
I’m glad to see bargello reaching a new audience, but I, like others, take issue with the statements that say it was “forgotten” or “extinct.” Besides bargello in quilting, it has never left the realm of needlepointers or sampler makers (the stitch is also known as Irish stitch or flamestitch. Hooray to Bret for giving it a wider audience!
Bravo! Like you I never stopped stitching or loving Bargello.
Keep stitching,
Janet
I have loved bargello needlepoint since my mom did it when I was a kid, and 7 or 8 years ago I started picking up used 70s-era books on the subject at our library’s used book sale. They sell hundreds of thousands of used books at each year’s sale so now I have a nice collection of them and plan to design/make a piece later this year. Everything old becomes new again if you wait long enough!
Bargello is a very old craft, look on Pinterest you will see many, very old, men’s pocketbooks from the late 1700’s to early 1800’s. They were very fine and delicate, not sometime that was made quickly but are very intricate and beautiful. I don’t think bargello ever went out of style. It may have waned a bit but has always been around.
I think that bargello is truly beautiful and that endures through the ages, even if it goes out of style for a decade or two. It reemerges and gets reinvented for a new age because it’s enduringly beautiful.
I have the canvas. I have the yarn (Paternayan Persian). I have the books: Four-Way Bargello, Needlepoint Bargello, Bargello: An Explosion in Color, Bargello Magic: How to Design Your Own, Bargello: Florentine Canvas Work, The Margaret Boyles Bargello Workbook, Designs for Bargello . . . I dug those out of the Deep Stash to write this comment, but the one I can’t find is Bargello Borders……Not that I’m going to take up bargello stitchery anytime soon. (“As soon as I finish this quilt.” LOL!)
I love the design and colours at the top of your website. Please can you tell me whether you can supply design and wool?
Very impressed.
Hi Suzanne, If you’re hoping to hear back from Hello Bargello you should contact them directly on their website. I don’t have access to these details.
I wanted to add that Rosina Planes from the UK is selling a Bargello Mosaic pattern on Ravery. Com for those of us who love to CROCHET and love BARGELLO. Rosina also created and administers a private facebook group in which she shares exclusively her own patterns and the group provides support as we work through her patterns and post our own takes of colorways or rearrangement of the varied sections she presents in each of her patterns.
Is Bargello on the same idear as Hardranger, Swedish weaving on monks cloth? I want to make throw pillows for my couch doing Bargello. I did find a paper back book on Bargello. I knew a 97 year old that had a pillow that her mother had made. It caught my eye and that’s why I would like to make my own. I enjoy embroidery, needle point ,Swedish weaving, and crochet, also thread crochet. I wasn’t lucky enough to be old enough when my grandmother passed to learn ,but I did manage to teach myself to do the needle work I saw her doing when I was a child.
No, it isn’t. Bargello is more like needlepoint. It uses canvas, like needlepoint, and the same kind of threads. The stitches are straight and typically go over four threads. The basic needlepoint stitch is diagonal and goes over one intersection.
Keep stitching,
Janet