The Tricky Traits of Value

Choosing fabrics for quilts isn’t hard, but it can be tricky.

Choosing fabrics for quilts involves auditioning the color, size of motif, and value of the fabrics. I have long thought I understood the value of fabric values. Value is what makes, say, a simple, two-color quilt have bold areas of light and dark. Value also makes those cool secondary patterns in your multi-color quilt design appear like "magic".

Easy, right? I thought so. However, a few years ago (actually about 20 now), blended quilts became popular. I was mesmerized by these quilts. I bought the books and studied how to combine fabric values to work together, while not being too obvious or expected. Turns out, I never did really “get” it. It was too hard for me to look past the gorgeous floral motifs and colors. Thankfully, our guild had a program presenter who sold blended kits! Problem solved (for that moment).

To truly know the value of fabrics, you have to remove the color.

If I'd only known then what I know now! It's easy to know what value your fabric is when you remove the color. You can do this numerous ways, but the simplest trick for me is to take a picture of fabric choices or my blocks on my design wall with my phone and change the picture to black and white (mono or noir). Colors and motifs can fool you. For us quilters, fabrics aren’t just fabrics. They evoke emotion (usually happiness). I used to fall in love with a fabric, or line of fabrics, and be determined to use it because of my emotional connection. Consequently, I’ve made some quilts that turned out meh-okay, but they'd had the potential to be awesome.

When choosing fabrics for quilts, remember that values change

 depending one their surroundings.

That’s the tricky part! A quilter once said,

 “My LIGHT looks too dark when I use that light of MEDIUM.”

 Okay, that was me who said it, but it’s true! And, it can be tricky.

Light. Medium. Dark.

Let's take a look at Reflections of Love in the photo carousel above. I designed this Quiltmaker cover girl using both sides of twenty fat quarters with one light background fabric. It's easy to see in this quilt that the RIGHT sides of the fat quarters are all dark; the REVERSE sides are medium values; and the background is light. With this clear contrast in values, the X and O blocks clearly stand out in the quilt design. However, when Hoffman California Fabrics sent me a package of fabrics to design this quilt, I had to carefully audition the fabrics they sent, separating out some lovely colors and motifs because the values of the RIGHT and REVERSE sides weren't contrasting enough. The thing was, I LOVED some of those fabrics, much more than some I ended up using. However, it took black and white photos to convince me to do the right thing! While color can evoke an emotional response, value tells the truth.

That being said, I have a rule in my classes:

If you love a fabric and the value is right, USE IT! Life's too short to use fabric you don't LOVE!

Read more Mysterious Values