Colour Value Theory for Quilters – What you need to know!

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Understanding colour values for quilters – the good, the bad and the very pretty!

So far, we have have talked about how contrast is the key to producing an eye-catching quilt, and more specifically about ways that colour value contrast can be used in a good quilt design. But, what if you have never really thought about art basics before and are a bit sketchy on what colour value is and how to determine it? No problem! Today we are going to look at what colour value is, and how it applies to quilters.

Let’s explore the concept of colour value from a quilter’s perspective…… because paint mixing theory isn’t that helpful to us textile-sewing-person types……

Colour value definition

Colour Value is defined most simply as the relative lightness or darkness of a colour (read here, “fabric”!). The extremes of this continuum are black and white. All other colours lie somewhere in between the maximum darkness of black and the minimum lightness of white. Colour value is very easy to see in a grey scale or in a monochrome colour series. Here are some easy to spot colour value graduations:

Colour value graduations in black, red and blue. — Three colour value graduations in black, red and blue. The middle colours in the red and blue scales are pure colours, without black or white added. These are known as hues, The colours on the left of the hues are shades (hue + black) and the colours on the right are tints (hue + white)

Colour value is relative

The colour value of your fabric is relative to other fabrics or items around it. This is a really important fact! This means that whether a colour (fabric) appears to be dark or light can depend on the colours (fabrics) surrounding it. While white will always appear light and black will always be dark, colours closer to the middle of a colour range can appear light next to really dark colours or dark next to really light colours.

This is both great and not-so-great news for quilters. It is great, because it means that it is not necessary to use the extreme values of a colour to achieve good contrast in a quilt. A pastel quilt with a few well-placed mid-tones can look just as awesome as a vibrant quilt with saturated colours and a few dark highlights. Look at the image below. Both of the panels contain good contrast, even though they only cover a small subrange of colour values.

Teal fabrics showing a range of values. — Note: the light and medium fabrics in the lefthand picture are the exact same fabrics as the medium and dark fabrics in the righthand picture.

Colour Value can be complicated……

This relativeness of colour values is also “not-so-great” because you need to understand the relationship of colours with each other to understand how they will look together. This is tricky, but remembering that colours will appear lighter next to a dark colour and darker next to a light colour will help avoid nasty surprises. Apart from this, the best method of working out “what works where” in a quilt is often trial and error, even for seasoned quilters. For this, I find a design wall is extraordinarily helpful. If two fabrics or blocks affect the appearance of one another, it’s nice to know before you sew! Experience and practice are also the best antidotes if you suffer a lack of confidence in this area.

Repeated blocks on a quilt — Quilts made up of simple repeated blocks can take time to lay out until you are satisfied.

When I am making a quilt with lots of repeated blocks in varied fabrics, I always do a trial layout of my quilt blocks on the floor or a wall. Some layouts will always be more visually appealing than others, partly due to colour value distribution. There are usually lots of nice layouts, so it is silly to choose a jarring one that will disappoint you just because you didn’t experiment a little with block placement. And don’t stress about getting the “right” layout. There will be lots of great combinations. Just choose one you like.

So, remember: the Colour Value of a fabric (or even a whole block) is simply how light or dark that sucker is. But this is always assessed in the context of surrounding fabrics.

That’s pretty simple right? Right!

Where it gets trickier now, is to start thinking about how to determine the relative colour values of fabrics of unrelated colours. That is, between tints and shades of different colours (hues) rather than of the same hue. And then there are tones…… OK, I am thinking we should quickly define hues, tints, shades and tones before we go any further.

Hues, Tints, Shades and Tones (only the stuff that is helpful to quilters)!

Hues, Tints and Shades

portion of a colour wheel — Colour wheels have far more than the 6 colours you learned at school!

A hue is a pure colour that has not been diluted with white or black. Hues are what we generally think of as colours, and are usually found on simple colour wheels. Blue. Red. Green. Yellow etc. For this exercise, let’s pick one. Let’s say this Purple. Now, a tint is the same purple, but with some white mixed in – or in terms of fabric, most likely with less dye applied to the white background fabric. One example tint of the the original purple is this purple. On the other hand, a shade is also the same purple, but with some black mixed in. An example is this purple. This colour may be created on fabric by mixing the original purple dye with black dye.

You need to remember that adding white or black doesn’t change the colour (hue), just its relative colour value (lighter or darker). It also decreases the colourfulness (because the colour is diluted by the black or the white).

Tones

As for tones, I’ll let Google explain…..

“A tone is produced either by the mixture of a color with gray, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color (including black, gray and white) reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue remains unchanged.”

colour wheel explaining colour value theory — GIMP software colour wheel, showing you all the tints, shades and tones of a particular red hue.

The best illustration I can think of is the colour wheel in GIMP software. The triangle in the middle of the colour wheel points to the selected colour hue. The colour graduation along the edge between the hue and white (the lower edge of the triangle) covers all the tints of the hue. The colour graduation along the edge between the hue and black (the uppermost edge of the triangle) covers all the shades of the hue. Every other point within the triangle is a tone of the red hue (ie has some red, some white and some black in it). Except, of course, the leftmost edge of the triangle. This edge is actually a pure grey scale and has no red in it at all.

Comparing colour values between your fabrics

Comparing colour hues

Let’s now go back to talking about comparing value between completely different hues. For example – a shade of yellow vs a tint of green. As I mentioned before, this is where things get a lot more tricky – where a lot of books stop helping you, and a lot of quilters lose their confidence.

Hues have colour values relative to each other, just as the tints and shades of one hue can be compared. Pure yellow is not as dark as pure blue. Unfortunately, it is harder to judge value relationships between hues than it is within a hue family. And of all the colours, colour value relationships between bright hues are the hardest to judge.

Bright hues for comparison — Seven bright hues chosen from the pure colour wheel. The lightest is the yellow. But what order should we put the rest in?

Comparing colour tints, shades and tones

It is a bit easier to compare tints, shades and tones of different colours. This is probably partly to do with two facts: they are easier to look at, and they are closer to grey. If they were all grey, it would actually be relatively simple to order them.

Tints, tones and shades - colour value — Here are the same seven hues from the above picture, but they are softened. Top row: shades (hue + black), middle row: tones (hue + grey), bottom row: tints (hue + white).

To illustrate this, chose one of the tone/tint/shade families above and think of each colour as a grey. Now can you order them? Maybe, maybe not, but you will probably get further than if you try the same exercise with the pure hues.

Now try squinting at them (or decreasing the brightness on your device’s screen). This cuts down the amount of light entering the eye, and allows the rod-shaped light-sensing organs in your eye to predominate over the cone-shaped light-sensing organs. This is a useful trick because rod sensors don’t detect colour, only the cone sensors do. (This is also why at night everything appears to be various shades of black and white and grey).

You are now using grey as a comparison point; a visual anchor. The closer these colours appear to grey, the more monochrome the series becomes and the easier it is to deal with.

Fabrics in the real world are usually multicoloured! HELP!

Fabrics showing a decrease in the scale of the flower print from left to right. — Flower print fabrics (and one batik) in order of scale. The fabrics on the left have large scale motifs. As you move right the flower motifs get progressively smaller in scale.

On top of all this, we need to know how to compare fabrics that aren’t all one colour!! Very few quilters exclusively use solid single-colour fabrics all the time in every quilt. Perhaps a few hardcore modern quilters do; but most of us use a variety of fabrics over time, including prints and batiks. So, we will have additional challenges in determining the value of these fabrics. There some extra things to keep in mind when thinking about the value of these fabrics.

What to remember when considering the colour value of fabric prints

Mottled solid fabrics (also known as textured solids) are nearly as easy to categorise as plain solid colours. The colour value of these fabrics is the average of the colour across the surface. Stand back from these fabrics and the colour variations will blend together. The overall colour you see tells you the overall value of the fabric.
Small scale prints/batiks behave similarly to mottled solids. A small red print on white fabric will look pink from a distance. A small black motif on white fabric will look grey. Unless you are fussy-cutting these into tiny hexies, treat them like mottled solid fabrics and visually “average” the colour value.
Large scale prints need to considered much more in light of how you are going to use them. If you cut a large scale print into smallish pieces, some of the pieces will be completely different colours and values to other pieces. Determine the colour value of each piece individually. If you are using medium size pieces, be aware that one edge/corner of a piece may have a completely different colour value to another edge. This can play havoc with your placement of surrounding fabrics. The easiest solution is to use large scale prints in large areas – then the colour value differences that the fabric designer chose will work for you instead of against you. If you still desire large scale prints in a complicated quilt design where colour value is important, then it is best to fussy cut them or choose a fabric print with limited colour variation.
Depending on the print, medium scale print fabrics are treated either as large scale or small scale print fabrics. Now you have the skills, you will be able to decide!

I still need help determining the colour value of my fabrics!!

Thankfully there are a few simple tricks you can use to determine the colour value of a fabric, whether it is a solid colour fabric, a batik or a print. In a post coming soon I will go through all the methods I know, and what I think you need to know about each one. You might be surprised….. I personally think the techniques most commonly marketed to quilters are the most flawed. You can do it better yourself without buying a thing! Subscribe to my blog to be the first to know when I publish this post soon!

Clever Chameleon logo Remember: using colour value contrast in your quilt can make your design stunning, whether it is a landscape or other pictorial quilt, scrappy, appliqué, modern geometric or anything in between, And stunning is what we’re aiming for! But also remember, stunning is objective…. first and foremost your quilts should be appealing to you…. if you like your design then you will enjoy the creative process. Always be learning, but also make sure you are Quilting your Own Story!

May 28, 2017January 19, 2024

Six ways Talented Quilters use Colour Value

Talented quilt designers use colour value in a variety of ways. Choose one or two uses of colour value to spice up your next quilt!

Over the last few posts we have been thinking about improving our quilt designs by understanding the design concepts of contrast and colour value. Now let’s look at six key effects of using deliberate, creative use of colour value. These uses of colour value direct the eye and help the brain to interpret your quilt in a certain way. Most simply put; how you choose to contrast or blend each part of a quilt design can dramatically change how your quilt looks.

1. Use Colour Value Contrast to give a quilt design definition:

When it comes to making spectacular quilts, it is the colour value range that is more important than the actual colours. You can do a fabulous geometric quilt in all pinks. There is no reason at all why you can’t do an amazing flamingo all in blues. A beautiful lush landscape quilt could definitely be created all in purples. As long as you use colour value contrast to define your design.

Where you want a shape to be obvious, it must contrast in colour value with the surrounding fabrics. However, if you want an area of many pieces to be interpreted as a single shape, the opposite is true. To blend areas, the most important thing is to use colours of similar values (ie very little colour value contrast). The second thing to do is contrast them as a group with at least one colour that is quite different – the “us against them” principle.

Take a Jacob’s ladder block as an example (below).

Jacob's Ladder quilt examples showing differences in colour value contrast — Design A shows a high contrast choice of colour values, where the geometry of the Jacob’s Ladder is the main feature of the design. Design B shows the same design done in multiple colours. The design is still obvious because all the colours are closer in value to each other than they are to the background (white). This makes the brain interpret them as one related entity that is seperate from the background. Design C shows what happens when colour value contrast is not considered in tandem with the block layout. The colour value contrast in this quilt is randomly distributed. The effect is still pretty, but the Jacob’s Ladder design is lost and a completely different (not wrong) quilt results.

Knowing which fabrics will blend or contrast is the secret to successful scrappy quilts, Irish Chains and log cabin designs, just to mention a few.

Remember, deliberately blending fabric squares with their neighbours is a valid design choice. An example of this is the Disappearing Nine-Patch quilt. Knowing how colour value works simply gives you the power to design your quilts to be how you want them.

2. Use Colour Value Contrast to create depth:

In pictorial quilts, light value fabrics create highlights and dark value fabrics create shadows. But there is far more to understand about creating depth in quilts than just shadows and highlights. Did you know that if the values of two fabrics are similar, their shapes will seem closely connected in space and none will stand out from the others? To cause shapes to appear to be seperate in space and stand out form each other, it is necessary to use fabrics with contrasting colour values.

Use colour value contrast to create depth: tree example — Look at the bottom panel in this figure, This picture appears very very flat. In the top panel however, your brain wants to interpret depth, with the darker trees gradually receding, even though they are the same size as the lightest tree.

tree scene showing how to use colour value contrast — Have a look at the two simple scenes. The scene on the left is easier for the brain to interpret because the bigger trees are also lighter in value…. two agreeing cues that these trees are the closest.

Also you should keep in mind that shapes made of light colours visually “come forward”. This means they appear closer to the viewer than other areas of a quilt. Therefore, you can deliberately bring things into the foreground of a quilt by using light fabrics. Conversely, you can make features recede into the background when you add them in darker colours.

All of these effects are independent of the colour hue (ie red, blue, yellow etc). It is only the values (relative lightness and darkness) of the colours that matter.

3. Use Colour Value Contrast to convey feelings and action:

Colour values can convey concepts such as mood or change. For example, a dark region in a quilted sky will probably make you think of an impending storm. Conversely, a light patch will convey sunshine. This works even if the quilt is completely abstract and you use colours that are not true-to-life. Yet these effects are mostly lost if the whole sky is evenly coloured in the darker or lighter colours. It is the change in colour value that causes the brain to interpret the meaning.

4. Use Colour Value blending to create illusions of luminosity and light-sinks:

Graduating colour value can be used in quilts to enormous effect. One of my favourite effects created by graduating colour value is luminosity. When you start in the centre of a quilt design with a light colour and add rings or layers of increasingly darker colours around the original shape you create the illusion of luminosity. Luminous quilts tend to convey happiness and hope. Conversely, starting in the centre with dark value fabrics and graduating to lighter fabrics gives the illusion of a dark hole. Both effects are stunning when done right.

Luminous quilt block with four luminous corners. — Quilt block with four “luminous” log cabin corners.

This effect is often seen used in concentric quilt designs. Concentric just means “sharing a centre”. So concentric quilt designs are those that have a small shape in the centre that is surrounded by echoes of that shape gradually increasing in size. “Around the World” and “Blooming Nine-Patch” quilts are good examples of whole-quilt concentric designs. You can also incorporate luminosity into individual blocks of a quilt, to create lots of smaller focal points. An example is “Light in the Valley” quilts.

Luminosity is not confined to concentric quilts – it can easily be incorporated into non-symmetric designs and landscapes as well. Sunset quilts are one common example of this.

5. Use Colour Value Contrast to make colours more vibrant:

If you place contrasting value fabrics side by side they will make each other look more brilliant. Think of a dark silhouette in front of a sunset…. the sunset is magnified in beauty by the dark contrast. Black makes colours look brighter. White makes colours look darker. These are the extreme examples of this principle. Colours closer in value to each other will have the same effect on each other, but more subtly.

If you only use colours of the same value together, they can end up looking “washed out”. So, the takeaway message? Add a few lighter or darker colours to your quilt to maintain the beauty of your fabulous main fabrics.

6. Colour Value is critical for creating the illusion of three dimensions:

Use colour value to make illusion of three dimensional 3D block — You can represent three dimensions with colour values. Here is a square-based prism in three values of one colour.

Blending colour values gives the illusion of 3-dimensional shape and form to flat objects. This is the same principle as shading in a pencil drawing and is colour independent. Again it is the colour value of the fabrics that matter. You can make round features look three dimensional by gradually graduating from light to dark fabrics in any colour. You can create the look of flat edged 3D shapes using sharp changes in colour value. Tumbling block quilts use this second principle, as do other three dimensional illusions.

Realistic pictorial quilts generally use gradual changes in colour value to convey shape and substance.

So, what’s next?

If you’ve got this far, you’re probably wanting to better use colour value contrast to create better quilts. In this case, there are three things I recommend for you to do next. Firstly, get a really good handle on the theory of what colour value is and how it applies to quilts! Secondly, have a critical look at lots of quilts and decide what you like or dislike about their use of colour value contrast. This will help you decide what suits you and your quilt story. And thirdly, find a reliable method that you like to help you determine the colour values of your fabrics – so that there are no nasty surprises after your quilt top is finished and it doesn’t look right. Then start applying what you know to your quilt design process and grow as you go!

If you want to know more about colour value theory and how it applies to quilts, my next post will cover it nicely. Colour Value Theory for Quilters – What you need to know! is scheduled for the 4 June 2017. Subscribe to read it as soon as it is published.
If you want to see a variety of quilts that illustrate the principles of colour value contrast and blending that I have covered in this post, visit my especially curated Pinterest board: Colour Value Contrast discussion quilts. I have labelled each pin on this board with relevant features to take notice of. Have a critical look at them. What can you notice about the way the artist has used colour value?
If you want to know which tools I recommend to determine the colour value of your fabrics, subscribe to my blog to receive notification or come back in a week or two. I am halfway through writing a post on exactly that!

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P.S. If you found this article helpful, please feel free to pin and share, as long as you include attribution to Dione Gardner-Stephen and the correct Clever Chameleon URL. Thanks!

May 21, 2017January 19, 2024

Colour Value Contrast for Spectacular Quilt Designs

Becoming an expert in colour value contrast will help make your quilts stand out from the crowd.

Fabrics lined up in a row showing colour value contrast. — When choosing colours for your next quilt, there is waaaaay more to think about than just the colour scheme. How are you going to make those colours sing!!?

Last time we talked about how contrast is the key to producing an eye-catching quilt. If you missed that post, you might like to read my comprehensive overview of the types of contrast to consider when thinking about your next brilliant quilt. Today however, I want to start to elaborate further on just one of these types of contrast – using colour value contrast to give your quilt designs a facelift!

Colour value contrast is a quilt design fundamental you should master EARLY. Possibly even before the perfect 1/4″ seam……..!!

What is the very first thing you think of when I say “Add some contrast to your quilt.”? I bet your first response is something about using “light, medium and dark coloured fabrics”. This is colour value contrast.

Why do I think you will likely choose this form of contrast first and foremost, even though there are dozens of other ways to introduce contrast into a quilt? (And even though you’ve read my last post, right?!) It is because colour value contrast is one of the most fundamental design concepts used in great quilts. If you like looking at other people’s quilts, it is a concept you have already seen in action, possibly hundreds of times. We’ve all heard about it…. but do we really understand it? Let’s investigate and make sure…..

What is colour value and colour value contrast?

Colour value is defined most simply as the relative lightness or darkness of a colour (read “fabric”!). So, there are two parts to colour value:

the properties of a colour, and
the colour’s context.

A colour can be described as light, dark or medium. Really light and really dark value colours are fairly straight forward….. they tend to look light or dark in any context. However, medium value fabrics are more tricky. They have a habit of looking light next to dark fabrics and dark next to light fabrics. And these tricky fabrics are generally the ones that quilters buy in great lengths and hoard in stash. Because medium value colours are the most attractive.

However, as pretty as these fabrics are, if you only use medium colour value fabrics in a quilt it is very difficult to produce a “WOW” design. This is why you need colour value contrast. Effective colour value contrast is the art of using a range of colour values to create a design that is well-defined, pleasing to the eye and interesting to the brain.

Why is colour value contrast so important?

Colour value advice can be found in recent quilt books. — A selection of fabulous books from my personal library, all with advice on how to choose fabrics to get the best out of their patterns.

If you pick up a recently written quilt book , chances are that somewhere in the introduction there will be a short section about choosing fabrics. And in this section, you will be reminded to choose fabrics covering a range of colour values. If you’ve ever joined a class to sew a particular quilt pattern, I hope you’ve heard it there too. And you’re hearing it again here! This is because it is great advice and if you do not heed it, you will get a disappointing result. You will wonder why your quilt doesn’t capture you like the demonstrator’s/pattern’s example did.

Have you ever wondered why a quilt you’ve made looks flat, boring or dull; even though you used really really beautiful fabrics in colours that you love?

You might have wrongly assumed that it is because you can’t sew as well as “her”, or that you are just not talented enough at choosing fabrics. If you inner voice tries to tell you this, it is wrong, wrong, wrong! – You just need to get a better handle on using colour value contrast! If you are the victim of a boring quilt, the most likely culprit is that you have used too many fabrics of the same or similar colour value. Even if the actual colours are all different (ie red, blue, green etc) they can still be much the same value. The easiest way to see if this is the problem is to stand a good distance from your quilt. If the pattern disappears as you move away, you do not have enough colour value contrast.

Using different colour values properly in a quilt creates visual depth and adds definition to the design. Colour value contrast also changes the way the brain perceives colours – dark fabrics make mid colours appear brighter, while light fabrics make mid colours appear more intense. Colour value contrast causes people to notice those beautiful fabrics you’ve invested in and to see the fabulous layout of your pattern. It makes your quilt eye-catching.

Ok, so I can see that mastering colour value contrast would help me grow as a quilter…… What can I do?!

Like anything else, becoming proficient at choosing good fabric combinations takes practise. Try some of these suggestions:

If you have a stash, play with your fabrics to make colour combinations you like (you could use scraps to do this too). First, choose a couple of medium value fabrics that you really like together. Now find several more fabrics that look good with these Concentrate on making sure they are noticeably lighter or darker than your first choices. You may actually find that your stash is pretty short on light and/or dark fabrics….. you won’t be alone in this, it is quite common, and a good excuse for shopping!!
Find out more about how expert quilters use colour value contrast….. Attend a quilt show and deliberately look for the colour value contrast in your favourite quilts. Or read more about how colour value is used in quilting. You may like to read my article: Six ways talented quilt designers use colour value.
Find out more about colour value theory. Knowledge is power! My quilting perspective on this topic is collected here for you in: Colour Value Theory for Quilters: What you need to know!).

Practise, practise, practise!

In the meantime, look around you as you go about everyday life and notice colour value contrasts. Train your brain to see where colour values are used to create interest. Whether in the supermarket, reading a magazine, or relaxing at the park, be “contrast aware”. You might be surprised at what you see that you didn’t before!

P.S. If you found this article helpful, please feel free to pin and share as long as you include attribution to Dione Gardner-Stephen and the correct Clever Chameleon URL. Thanks!

P.P.S. I know some tricks you can use to rescue boring quilts suffering from lack of colour value contrast. Comment if you are interested in a post about this!

May 2, 2017January 19, 2024

Best Design Tip for an Eye-Catching Quilt

How do you get people to stop in their tracks for your quilt? Because whether it’s at home on your own wall, or hanging in a quilt show – it’s nice when people notice and appreciate your art!

Large quilt exhibitions are busy spaces. They are busy with wandering people, information stands, demonstrators and most likely, raffle competitions. Then there are the multitudes of quilts, all vying for attention. If you stand back and watch the visitors, they are mostly scanning….. looking to see what there is to see. If a quilt doesn’t grab their attention in the first few seconds they move on to the next. They naturally gravitate to the next eye-catching quilt.

Do you want people to pause at your quilt and take a closer look? Of course you do – you put a lot of effort into it and you found the courage to enter it into a show (or decorate your home with it).! Here’s the good news! Your quilt doesn’t have to get the blue ribbon (or any ribbon) to be a people-stopper. It doesn’t have to be an amazing pictorial quilt or brightly coloured to be an eye-catching quilt. It doesn’t even need to have a ridiculously complicated design. The one most important feature of a quilt that will make people pause in that first crucial moment is Contrast.

People taking a selfie with eye-catching quilt — I enjoy seeing people posing with my quilts. It’s a pretty big endorsement!

The first and foremost trick to producing an eye-catching quilt is to get the Contrast right.

Double check that you are alone and say it out loud for me… “Contrast”……. It really is that important!

Before I go any further, I want to digress just a little. Just in case you are thinking…….

“But I don’t want to show my quilts, I just want to make fantastic quilts for myself and the people I love. I’m trawling the internet because I don’t want to be that quilter who is always complaining that people don’t appreciate my really expensive, really time-consuming gifts!”

If this is you, then contrast is still your friend and you are in the right place. There are certainly other factors at play when designing a quilt as a gift, but let’s just concentrate on this one thing for now….. Getting the contrast right.

Back to basics – planning an eye-catching quilt from the very beginning

Fabric bolts on a shelf — These days there are so many wonderful fabrics available! It’s great, but it can get a bit daunting when you have to choose just a few.

Let’s be honest. Most of us quilters do not start a quilt by thinking about contrast. We usually get bogged down in choosing colours – unless we are still deliberating over the pattern. The colour and quilt pattern choices available seem overwhelmingly endless and it often matters greatly to us which pattern and colours we choose because we have a certain destination or recipient in mind.

Yet, while there is probably little point making a red quilt for someone who adores teal, or a dog quilt for a cat person, this still leaves us with a problem. And that is: the teal or cat quilt that lacks some sort of additional appeal is probably still going to end up in the cupboard or worse when your back is turned. The lacklustre quilt at the show gets ignored. And you miss out on a whole world of pleasure and satisfaction. despite all that effort. So what’s a thinking, caring quilter like you to do then?!

Treat quilting as the art form that we know it is, and brush up on some art basics!

Contrast is the foundation of a good quilt

Bowl of mixed colour pepper corns — Variety is the spice of life! This “mixed medley” of peppercorns is visually far more interesting than just black peppercorns. Think of contrast as the variety in your quilt.

I believe that a lack of contrast is one of the most common design decisions that lets down otherwise brilliant quilts. Once you understand the concept of contrast, you can evaluate your patterns and colour choices much more easily and change ordinary quilts into something special. If you think about contrast at each design step you will always end up with a better quilt than if you don’t. So the best thing for you to do is to become so familiar with this concept that it becomes second nature. Contrast provides interest. Contrast provides excitement and drama. Contrast provides depth and focal points. Fascinating contrasts are often visual, but they can also be emotional or tactile. Are you getting a sense of how integral this concept is to a great quilt?! Yes? Fantastic!

How to Use Contrast to create an Eye-Catching Quilt

There are five main types of contrast I can think of that really matter for quilts. Contrast in colour value, Contrast in form, Contrast in scale, Contrast in placement and Contrast in texture. Use them wisely and sparingly (too much of a good thing is Too Much), and you are a long way towards creating a great quilt. So let’s explore each briefly in turn today and I will expand further on each as my blog grows.

Contrast using colour value

Fabrics lined up in a row. — Once you have found the quilting fabric section in your local store or online, the colour of the fabrics is likely the next thing to grab your attention. Ignore the colours for a moment and think about values.

Contrast is most easily achieved in a quilt by using fabrics that cover a range of colour values. Colour value is defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a colour. So to have a range of values in your design means that your quilt will use light, medium and dark fabrics, regardless of their colour. In the photo of fabrics above there is a range of colours (yellow, green, brown, blue). There is also a range of values (light and dark).

You can read more about using colour value in quilts by reading Colour Value Contrast for Spectacular Quilt Designs, Six Ways Talented Quilters use Colour Value and Colour Value Theory for Quilters – What you need to know!

Using colour value contrast

There are many ways you can incorporate colour value contrast into a quilt, but let’s start with one of the simplest examples; one that most quilters will be able to relate to. Let’s choose a traditional, pieced quilt block and pretend to create it out of several fabrics of the same colour but of differing values.

A simple example:

Let’s look at the log cabin block. Below are three diagrams of a log cabin block made in blue fabrics of varying values, with or without white. Now, there are two things to notice. The first is that how much contrast you choose to use will affect what a block looks like. And the second is that where you choose to use that contrast within the block will also greatly affect how your eye interprets the block. This is because of the way the fabrics contrast or blend with their neighbouring fabrics.

Log cabin block examples of using colour value — Log cabin blocks, coloured in three different patterns using different values of the colour blue with or without white. The blocks hardly look related.

The contrast structure that you choose for the basic log cabin block then in turn affects how you can use it to create an eye-catching quilt. Here are three simple quilts that you could make using 16 direct repeats of the basic log cabin blocks in the diagrams above.

Examples of eye-catching quilts based on log cabin blocks — Three very different quilts all made from direct repeats of blue log cabin blocks.

Three blue log cabin blocks, three extraordinarily different quilt designs. Try to place aside your personal preferences and think about which quilt you would notice first from across the room……

Chances are you have said B or C. These are high contrast designs, relying on contrasting colour value for their effect. You may not personally like them (or you may) but either way, they are eye-catching. Design A is a low contrast design. Low contrast designs make fantastic backgrounds where you might otherwise be tempted to use a single fabric. To turn design A into an eye-catching quilt, you would need to layer it with another form of contrast, ie contrast in form, scale, placement or texture.

Contrast using shape and form

Pomegranates and Peaches quilt showing scale and form contrast — “Pomegranates and Peaches” Quilt (detail) – this piece shows contrast in both form and scale.

When you are deciding on a quilt design you can introduce contrast by using a variety of shapes (ie squares, triangles, circles etc). This is known as contrast in form. An example of a high contrast choice in this category would be curved shapes mixed with straight-sided shapes (eg circles vs squares). A low contrast choice of shapes would be circles mixed with irregular but curved blobs of a similar size.

Have a look at “Pomegranates and Peaches” above. The piecing is very obviously made up of squares and rectangles set in rows and columns. But the featured fruit is a collection of round shapes that I also set on a curve for effect. These juxtapositions encourage you to look at the quilt longer than if it was just a simple convergence quilt of straight lines. Lots of contemporary art quilts and modern quilts use contrast in form to great effect.

Contrast using scale

A quilt that shows contrast in scale by Dione Gardner-Stephen — “Pomegranates and Peaches” has fabrics that have similar shaped subjects of varying scale.

What would you do though, if you decided that you really like quilts with circles and didn’t want lots of straight lines confusing the issue? One type of contrast that would work in this case would be to use circles of different sizes. This is called contrast in scale.

Have another look at “Pomegranates and Peaches”. The round pomegranates are echoed by small and medium circular fruits in three of the pieced fabrics. So this quilt also utilises contrast in scale….. although when I made it I didn’t think about the prints mostly being circles. I simply chose fabrics with a variety of scale in the prints – large fruits and small fruits.

Secondary designs as sources of contrast:

Sometimes you don’t need to deliberately include contrast in scale into your quilt. Sometimes this occurs naturally as a secondary design of colour value contrast! Look again at the log cabin quilt examples from earlier. From a distance, log cabin quilt B looks like it is made of squares of varying sizes. This is purely because of the colour value and placement choices that I made, and doesn’t occur for the other two designs.

Contrast using placement

Modern quilt example of contrast in placement. — A mock-up of a very simple modern quilt, showing a cluster of lines that are varied in their orientation.

You can readily find good, simple examples of eye-catching quilts that use contrast in placement by looking at quilts from the modern quilt movement. What you are looking for are quilts with a repeated motif, like a line or a triangle. Now look to see whether these repeated shapes are varied in their spacing relative to each other, or in their direction relative to each other (or both). This is contrast in placement.

Your can also combine contrast of placement with contrast of scale to give a design a sense of movement. This is going to have to be a topic for another day, but it is a very fun design tool.

Another example:

Just before we move on though, I will show you a more traditional example of using contrast in placement. In the log cabin example from earlier, I have rotated some of the log cabin blocks of design C to generate a completely different design for you. I think that the original design, with the 16 directly repeated blocks is a very ordered, slightly harsh design. Every block is an independent focal point. The design to the right however, draws the eye into the middle of the quilt and out to the corners. The blocks work together and the design is easier to look at. This difference is caused by the introduced contrast in placement. Which design you prefer will of course depend on your own personal preferences and what you are trying to achieve.

Log Cabin quilts showing the concept of different contrast in placement — I simply varied the orientation of the log cabin blocks, and the quilt design is significantly changed (left panel vs right panel).

Contrast using texture

Fabric origami flower block — Fabric origami flower – just one of the many fabric manipulations you could use to add texture to a quilt.

One of the fabulous things about quilting is that most of the design happens in 2D but the actual crafting has a lot of the fun of a 3D art form. Many of us, myself included, are much more comfortable designing in two dimensions than three. I can get my head around things in two dimensions and I can represent my ideas accurately on a piece of paper without having a meltdown. But when I get to the quilting and embellishing phase of the quilt process, it has all the lovely tactile qualities of a 3D art form. You can touch and feel a quilt in a way that you just can’t do with a painting or drawing.

To make the most of the 3D aspects of a quilt you can consider adding textures as surface elements or as an integral aspect of quilt construction.

Using contrast in texture

Texture in the fabric of the quilt:

One suggestion for adding texture to quilts is to simply use multiple types of fabrics to piece the quilt sandwich. The quilt police have had their day; a quilt top does not have to be made exclusively of quilting weight cotton (or any quilting weight cotton at all for that matter)! Anyway, there are loads of fabric types that make great quilts, either for your bed or the wall. Another thing you can do to add texture at the construction phase is add features such as piping, prairie points, fabric origami, cathedral windows, gathers and pleats.

Surface texture:

Examples of surface additions that give texture are beads, buttons, costume jewellery, paper, plastic, recycled and found items…. the options are probably endless, especially if your quilt is intended for the wall.

Detail of Sweet Dreams wall quilt showing jewellery sewn on — “Sweet Dreams” Wall Quilt (detail). I used broken costume jewellery to add surface texture and interest to an abstract art piece.

Adding texture with quilting

Detail of Sunflower Rising Wall Quilt showing use of quilting to add texture and contrast. — “Sunflower Rising” Art Quilt (detail). I depicted the centre of the sunflower purely through concentrated quilting. I quilted the rest of the piece relatively sparsely.

A rule of thumb says “quilts should be quilted evenly all over”. Break the rules, not your thumbs, I say. You do need to have enough quilting all over your quilt to stabilise your quilt and stop the batting moving inside. But you will not ruin your quilt with areas of denser quilting on a quilt with quality batting. What you will do is add contrasts of texture into your quilt. Indeed, this is actually what a good trapunto quilt relies on – a heavily quilted background with the padded design sparsely quilted. If its good enough for trapunto, then its good enough for other quilts too.

You can add also add colour and scale contrasts to your eye-catching quilt using quilting. Lori Kennedy runs a great blog on free-motion quilting and has recently discussed using quilting to provide contrast at the quilting stage through contrasting threads, contrasting scale and contrasting density. For more ideas, read Lori’s article here.

Even the most traditional forms of quilting can lend themselves to contrast. Find out what I discovered about contrast in form, scale and direction while I was learning to quilt feathers recently in this post: Quilting Feathers for Beginners.

A Final Thought on Contrast – specifically for Show Quilts

Here’s a final thought for those of you who do like to show quilts, or would like to show quilts. There is one more layer of contrast to consider to grab your audience’s attention. Will your quilt stand out among the others, or will they all look the same? What can you do to your quilt to make it different to everyone else’s? Think outside the box. Can you tweak your design to add in something unexpected or re-interpret a traditional block perhaps? Call it innovation, uniqueness, or individuality….. at the end of the day, if your quilt is well designed and a bit different to all the others around it – if it tells your quilt story not everyone else’s – people will stop and look.

And Before I Go, a Word of Caution!

Like most things, contrast can be overdone. To reap the benefits, you must use contrast wisely. If you feature too many contrasts in one quilt, the design will get lost in busyness and will not come together as a single entity. The viewer will not know where to look first! Don’t add lots and lots of contrast at the construction stage if you plan to add lots and lots of contrast at the quilting stage. The different forms of contrast will fight for attention and your quilt will be the worse for it.

Clever Chameleon logo Choose just a few contrasts wisely at each step of your quilt creation process and your quilt will sing. And when your quilts sing, you are Quilting your Own Story.

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