You Aren't Just Choosing Colors

You Are Choosing Values

Choosing fabric for a quilt isn't just about picking colors you like. Color value is even more important than color in determining how well your quilt works. You need to select for both color and value.

Here are values for a brown starting at dark and going to light.





When a Friendship Star is made using values of the brown that are close together, the design is hard to see.

When there is more contrast in the values, the design is better defined and has more life.


This time a range of dark colors is used to make the Friendship Star. These colors are pleasant together but don't have enough contrast to make the design work.

The same thing happens when the color values are in the mid-range.

And again when the color values are light, resulting in pastels.

It's not that the colors in these three color pallets don't look good together. They do.

The problem is that there is not enough contrast in value to make the design work.

When you are choosing fabric for a quilt you need to be just as aware of the values of the fabrics you pick as you are of the colors.