exploration in subtle

My "quilt receipe" for this quilt top was to have a simple colour palette of just a few peach, pink and mint prints . . . with lots of low volume fabrics . . . making sure the darkest fabrics went in the centre of each block . . . and of course, to go scrappy. A simple quilt can be the most pretty sometimes, don't you think?

There's been a lot of interest in using low volume fabrics lately. I know these fabrics as maybe called pastels, lights, background fabrics, or neutrals - print fabrics that are "light" in colour.

We all have different fabrics in our stashes, are you like me and tend to {unwittenly} buy mainly medium value? After a little stash-diving, I found an assortment of scrappy low volumes for this quilt. Mine all tend to be mainly white based, pale but not dull, some busy some not so. They seem to give a soft subtle feel with just a little merging of boundaries to my quilt top.

I've loved playing with these subtle colours and exploring the different light & dark values from my stash! As I progressed, it was clear that 'contrast', however subtle, was the key and really, the colour of a fabric is not known until it is actually playing up beside it's neighbour!

Close up, things aren't too obvious,
this is a quilt best veiwed from a distance to get the full effect . . .

Here's the links to a couple of recent posts about using low volumes -

Blair from wisecrafthandmade, where my initial inspiration came from

and Cynthia from quiltingismorefunthanhousework

I'd love to hear your thoughts about working playing with low volumes too.