Bargello questions - whether to sew a tube or not?
I'm getting ready to do my first Bargello (yay New Year's resolutions! ). I'm working on a super simple one from my LQS made up of 2.5" strips. The instructions want you to sew fabrics in order from 1 to 24 - okay, no problem. Then the instructions just say to cut the indicated widths to get all of my columns ... what I'm wondering is if I should sew fabric 1 to 24 first? The instructions have you doing that later where you unsew specific pieces, and you then attach 1 and 24 for 95% of the strips sets. I feel like I've heard before about sewing them into a tube first, that way there's only unsewing that needs to be done to get the right rows.
The strata will be roughly 49" when they're all attached, so even folded over, that's about 25" which seems like a lot and I'm wondering if the tube might somehow make that more difficult?
Help is appreciated. Thanks!