Value and contrast in quilts: the squint test

What value is

Value is how light or dark a fabric is, whatever its color. A pale yellow and a pale blue can be the same value; a navy and a pumpkin are not. Your eye reads a quilt’s pattern from its values first, and its colors second. That’s why a quilt can be in colors you love and still look flat: the colors differ, but the values don’t.

Here are five fabrics in order, light to dark, in color and as the grays they’d print as on a black-and-white printer:

Why contrast matters

Contrast is the difference in value between fabrics that sit next to each other. Where two fabrics meet with strong contrast, you see a sharp edge. Where they meet with little, the edge melts away. The pattern of a block (the star, the chain, the pinwheel) is the set of edges you can see.

This quilt still reads as stars in gray, because the navy points are dark on a light ground:

The trap: different colors, the same value

Red and green look as different as colors can. But a middle red and a middle green can be almost exactly the same value. Here the star points are a red and the ground a green that print as the very same gray:

In real life the colors fight: the edge seems to buzz, because your eye sees a color change with no change in value. Keep the red, and change the ground to a light green, and the stars come back:

Value is relative

A fabric isn’t light or dark on its own: it’s light or dark next to its neighbors. The same denim blue reads as the light one between two navies, and as the dark one between two whites.

So sort your fabrics against each other, not against a rule. A medium is the fabric that’s darker than your lights and lighter than your darks, and it can be a different fabric in every quilt.

The squint test

Pin your fabrics or blocks on a wall, step back, and squint until the edges blur. Color fades when you squint, and value stays. The shapes you still see are the ones people will see from across a room.

Other ways to see value, if squinting doesn’t work for you:

• A black-and-white photo. Most phone cameras have a mono filter. Photograph the fabrics side by side; this is the most reliable check.
• Step well back, or look through the wrong end of binoculars, or a door peephole. Distance does what squinting does.
• A red value finder (a piece of red plastic) hides color, but it doesn’t work on red fabrics, which all look light through it. Use a green one for reds.
• Fold and stack. Fold each fabric to a strip and lay them in a fan, light to dark. Any that look out of place in a photo of the fan are in the wrong spot.

How much contrast you need

• Three values are enough for most blocks: a light, a medium and a dark. The darkest fabric goes where you want the eye to go first.
• Strong contrast makes a bold, graphic quilt, and shows off sharp points.
• Low contrast (all lights, called low volume, or all mediums) makes a soft, quiet quilt. That’s a fine choice, made on purpose; then the quilting and the texture carry it.
• Where the pattern lives: the two fabrics on either side of the edge you most want to see need the most contrast. A star’s points against its ground matter more than its center against its points.

Common mistakes

• Choosing fabrics by color alone, at arm’s length in the shop. Check them together in a black-and-white photo before you cut.
• Every fabric a medium. Add one true light and one true dark.
• A background that’s the same value as the blocks’ main fabric, so the blocks blur into it.
• Judging value under warm indoor light, which flatters some colors. Check in daylight if you can.