Splendid colour tips for quilting: Yellow in quilts
My quilts do not feature a lot of yellow, but I often take advantage of its eye-catching character. Today’s colour tips for quilting center around yellow: what to watch out for and how to use yellow successfully in your quilts.
Yellow is often associated with youth, hope, and joy. It is an optimistic, energetic colour and it is often used to draw attention to something.
As a result, any yellows tend to blend into the white areas placed next to them, so it is difficult to achieve a good value contrast between yellow and white.
Even so, yellow is not automatically the lightest-value fabric in the surface. For a long time, I did not understand this and thought that any yellow would be a “light” in a quilt.
This is a good example that demonstrates my lack of understanding: the bright-looking yellow and the mid-light blue have colour contrast but no value contrast. The row of blocks loses its steady rhythm in that area, and that was not my intention.
You can see the lack of value contrast better in a black-and-white version of the same image:
On the other hand, yellows tend to stand out from a quilt surface. This may not be the effect you are seeking.
Pure violet is the contrast colour for yellow, which means that they have maximum colour contrast. Even the brownish mustard-yellows stand out extremely well from the violet patches in these zipper bag surfaces:
The effect is great for a small item – but in a larger scale, the extreme colour contrast may just be too much.
When you are considering to use bright yellow together with intensive, pure reds, blues or greens, the result may look childlike. If that is your goal, then the combinations are fine, of course!
Though this quilt from my early quilting days combined less than intensive blues and yellows, it still looks childlike. It was my intention – but all the same, this unnamed quilt did not become anyone’s favourite.
You can use the intensity of yellow colour to your advantage because yellows will easily stand out from a multicoloured surface.
The Twinkle! / Tuikkikaa! quilt is multicoloured, but which part of it first catches the eye? Most probably the yellow areas which I’ve placed closer to the top of the quilt:
The yellow squares are noticeable also in my Chance / Sattumankauppaa quilt, even though there are thousands of other squares and colours in the surface.
When making the bear paw blocks for the Otava quilt, I chose the colours at random – but applied one rule: every block had to include some yellow or orange (or fabric that could be interpreted as mostly yellow-ish/orange-ish).
The resulting quilt is colourful, but somehow the theme makes the blocks look more cohesive:
This combination of less intense, orange-ish and greenish yellows with turquoise looks good too – perhaps worth testing in a larger surface?
Of course yellows will go well with other yellows. Why not sew a small item – like my Six / Kuutonen zipper bag and use any fabric scrap that is predominately yellow? And if you like the colour, you could make a whole quilt in yellow – it would certainly brighten up a room!
What to watch out for when using yellow?
Many quilters consider yellow a difficult colour, and this is probably because yellow is such an intensive colour for the human eye. And at the same time, even the most saturated yellows look surprisingly close to white in value to the human eye.As a result, any yellows tend to blend into the white areas placed next to them, so it is difficult to achieve a good value contrast between yellow and white.
Even so, yellow is not automatically the lightest-value fabric in the surface. For a long time, I did not understand this and thought that any yellow would be a “light” in a quilt.
This is a good example that demonstrates my lack of understanding: the bright-looking yellow and the mid-light blue have colour contrast but no value contrast. The row of blocks loses its steady rhythm in that area, and that was not my intention.
Pure violet is the contrast colour for yellow, which means that they have maximum colour contrast. Even the brownish mustard-yellows stand out extremely well from the violet patches in these zipper bag surfaces:
When you are considering to use bright yellow together with intensive, pure reds, blues or greens, the result may look childlike. If that is your goal, then the combinations are fine, of course!
Though this quilt from my early quilting days combined less than intensive blues and yellows, it still looks childlike. It was my intention – but all the same, this unnamed quilt did not become anyone’s favourite.
How to use yellow successfully in a quilt?
A quilt sewn of bright yellow and pink fabrics would look intensive (maybe too intensive), but when you neutralise the yellow-and-pink areas with a lot of white, the effect can be as nice as this:The Twinkle! / Tuikkikaa! quilt is multicoloured, but which part of it first catches the eye? Most probably the yellow areas which I’ve placed closer to the top of the quilt:
The resulting quilt is colourful, but somehow the theme makes the blocks look more cohesive:
Final words
Yellow may be a high-intensity colour, but it does not have to be overwhelming. A little will go a long way, and sometimes that is exactly what your quilt needs.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.
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