Value at Work in my Quilts

I got the red border on. I like it better.

But the pinwheels don't show up well.

They didn't show up much better on the original on I made.

I love the fabrics in both quilts, but should have stuck with the two-color scheme. The pattern got broken up when the values of the blues I used varied too much.

I have read about color value in quilt books, but I have not thought consciously about it when putting together fabrics for my quilts. The Irish Chain quilt (below) that I was working on for a challenge (what year was that?), and still have not finished, shows good contrast and use of value.

You can read more about color value in quilting

by clicking HERE.

Since I use stash fabrics in my quilts, I often don't have enough of the fabric to make all the blocks the same. In the Irish chain, most of the big yellow areas are whole pieces with the corner squares appliqued on, but one is pieced. Can you see the difference in the two pictures?

Value is what's wrong with the quilt below.

In Pepper Cory's class sample (sorry you'll have to scroll down through the linked blog post, but the photo is worth it) the background fabrics create diagonal lines through the quilt. My background fabrics were too close in value and the drama of the diagonal lines is lost.

That's why I have not finished it?

I have to say though that Sashiko is really fun, and I cannot think of a better way to get young people working with needle and thread. (See Sophie Rubin on Quilting Arts by clicking this link.)

 I wish the preprinted panels were easy to find.

Let me know if you have a good website for Sashiko supplies, and I'll promote it here on the blog.

Last, for this post, is a little bitty quilt top I made from some scraps I found in Mom's (Linda Brannock's) discards. No lesson about value here; I was just making something useful from scraps, but you can see value at work in it too.