Splendid colour tips for quilting: Greys in quilts
Grey is one of the most – if not the most – versatile neutral colours in quilting. It is a softer colour than black, and it will help your highlight colours stand out. In this post, I share practical tips about the use of grey in quilting using my own quilts and quilted items as examples.
Grey represents neutrality, simplicity, peace, future-orientedness and logic. Grey is not an emotional colour, and it is associated with technology, industrial activity, control, professionalism and even with elegance.
Not all greys are colourless – a pure mix of black and white. There are all shades, ranging from yellowish to purplish and brownish:
And then there is the special brown-grey colour called taupe.
Taupe is the colour that is just as brown as it is grey. The word “taupe” comes from the French word for mole whose fur is of that colour. It may be that quilters find taupe more interesting than other people because Japanese quilters use it abundantly and in very chic ways. They are masters in combining taupe, brown, beige, and grey so that the results aren’t boring.
I looked and could find only one quilt block that I ever made mostly in taupe colour. It is the ice cream cone on the lower left:
The image is an in-progress shot of a small quilt called “Matters of Taste,” which doesn’t make me proud in any way. I made it for the “Views from Finland” themed challenge in 2018.
If you rely only on colour contrast, you may very well see that the grey will blur into the adjacent colours. I experienced this in my green and grey Drunkard’s Path blocks (and green paired with black-and-white fabrics that read as grey when viewed from a distance):
The greys and greens in my blocks were too close to each other in value. The colour combination looked cute when I was sewing the blocks and saw them close up, but I should have checked the value contrast! On the quilt surface, the intended pattern was practically invisible, except when I’d used really dark greys (or blacks).
The colours on the quilt surface may be nice, but the rhythm of the pattern was lost.
If most of the greys in a quilt fall into the same value range as your coloured fabrics, the design can lose contrast and structure even if the fabric combinations are beautiful.
Grey is a neutral colour and as all neutrals, it may look too serious or dreary on its own, or when the only colours in the quilt are neutrals. Though as said, many Japanese quilters can make even those combinations look gorgeous!
It would be great to show you a picture of a dreary-looking, grey-toned quilt item, but I could not find one amongst my makes. This is probably because I cannot help but include some brights in every project…
Or, like here, a combination of greys and blacks with a tiny bit of bright pink:
My Mushroom Forest bag features grey and black fabrics, which should make it look elegant.
However, my blog post about the Mushroom Forest bag in 2011 mentions the sturdiness of the bag. I thought one could fill it with sand and use it as a weapon. And even when empty, it reminded me of a sandbag… So was it elegant after all, I wonder?
The First Snow zipper bag from 2023 also has a grey look, though of course I’ve not been able to avoid adding some colour:
Grey is an excellent neutral, and I’ve used a variety of greys in a variety of ways as background for colourful blocks. In the Internal Sweater quilt, finished in 2014, I used black and grey to create a background that looked stripey.
Since I have a long experience, and have lived in times when fabric stores did not carry a huge selection of quilting fabrics, I’ve learned to buy a decent length of any good grey quilting cotton whenever I come across such fabric. Greys come in so many shades that you can never be sure to find the right one when you need it for a current project. Build a good stash of greys!
Today, I have the pleasure and privilege of living close enough to a real quilting fabric store, but things were different some years ago. One had to take whatever greys one could find.
For example, the blocks for my Massey Ferguson quilt required quite a bit of white, nearly black, and grey fabrics and I had to source them from a big shop in Tallinn, Estonia. It was not convenient to have to go abroad for fabric shopping.
I’m so grateful to all Finnish quilting shop owners! They help us quilters build our stash to support our lovely hobby!
A white-grey background fabric can give a boost to many colours. Such as to orange and red, like in my zipper pouch called Cube / Kuutio.
I belong to the Finnish quilting association Finn Quilt, and participated to their monthly colour challenge in 2021. The pieces for the zipper bag Pound / Pauna that I made for the challenge are probably the closest to "all grey" that I can ever achieve:
Late in the year 2024 I chose to use greys prominently in my quilt Between the Darkness and the Light.
I had calculated how many blocks I would need – but miscalculated badly. As a result, I was left with quite a few extra grey squares, which I then used as background for another quilt, Hindsight / Jälkiviisautta:
For some reason, I decided to cut out the extra layer from under the appliqued scrappy circles. Then, I could not bear the thought of throwing the pieces away, and had to figure a way to use them in a quilting project. The result: the centers in the appliqued flower shapes in this Healthy / Terveellistä quilt:
Even though grey isn’t a colour one first associates with flowers, the choice seemed to work fine! Here are some of my flower blocks closer up:
Grey colour was the gift that just kept on giving in 2024-2025!
Not all greys are colourless – a pure mix of black and white. There are all shades, ranging from yellowish to purplish and brownish:
Taupe is the colour that is just as brown as it is grey. The word “taupe” comes from the French word for mole whose fur is of that colour. It may be that quilters find taupe more interesting than other people because Japanese quilters use it abundantly and in very chic ways. They are masters in combining taupe, brown, beige, and grey so that the results aren’t boring.
I looked and could find only one quilt block that I ever made mostly in taupe colour. It is the ice cream cone on the lower left:
What to watch out for when using greys
Because grey is a neutral, it will go with any colour as long as you remember value contrast: make sure that your colours are clearly lighter or darker than the greys next to them.If you rely only on colour contrast, you may very well see that the grey will blur into the adjacent colours. I experienced this in my green and grey Drunkard’s Path blocks (and green paired with black-and-white fabrics that read as grey when viewed from a distance):
If most of the greys in a quilt fall into the same value range as your coloured fabrics, the design can lose contrast and structure even if the fabric combinations are beautiful.
Grey is a neutral colour and as all neutrals, it may look too serious or dreary on its own, or when the only colours in the quilt are neutrals. Though as said, many Japanese quilters can make even those combinations look gorgeous!
It would be great to show you a picture of a dreary-looking, grey-toned quilt item, but I could not find one amongst my makes. This is probably because I cannot help but include some brights in every project…
How to use greys successfully in a quilt
Grey colour can be associated with elegance, and pairing it with black will usually achieve good value contrast. So, if you need to make something for a stylish person, a black-and-grey item, possibly with a bit of white included can be a successful choice.Or, like here, a combination of greys and blacks with a tiny bit of bright pink:
The First Snow zipper bag from 2023 also has a grey look, though of course I’ve not been able to avoid adding some colour:
For example, the blocks for my Massey Ferguson quilt required quite a bit of white, nearly black, and grey fabrics and I had to source them from a big shop in Tallinn, Estonia. It was not convenient to have to go abroad for fabric shopping.
A white-grey background fabric can give a boost to many colours. Such as to orange and red, like in my zipper pouch called Cube / Kuutio.
Final words
I hope that my examples have proven to you that grey is a versatile neutral and is worth considering as a calm background colour, especially for your colourful fabrics.If you missed the earlier splendid colour tips
I’ll be discussing other colours soon, sharing tips and stories from my own quilts. If you want to be sure to get all my colour tips – and possibly other fun updates as well – you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter.
Comments