Value Makes a Difference

While playing with some more orange and purple fabrics I made two versions of a particular block.  More about the block later, but first let's take a look.

You can clearly tell that  one has higher contrast than the other. But you can see the design.  But suppose you were colorblind...  To simulate that, I changed the photo to grayscale.

The one on the right appears to be all one color. This is the difference that value plays in quilting. In either version of the photo, the block on the left is nicely contrasted and would even show well in dim light.  But, in dim light the block on the right would look "fuzzy" and lack definition.
The old saying is: "Color gets all the credit, but value does all the work."  I hope you can see the truth in that by looking at these blocks.
 If you are uncertain about picking value you can use a value viewer or if you have a smart phone, just take a photo of the fabrics together.  Most phones have an option of converting the photo to black and white.  If not, there are plenty of free apps that will do it.

That said, I will still use the bland block in the final quilt (unless I end up with an extra block.)

This block design is one that I found on Pinterest (I think.)   But there it was made with all half-square triangles.  I quickly saw that I could use the Accuquilt Go! Qube set to make an 8 inch version using the parallelogram  and the half square triangle. That removed eight seams per block. It did take a bit of thinking to figure out how to do the construction.  But it turned out to be easier than I initially thought.

I am considering doing a tutorial for this block using the Accuquilt Qube set.  I just wonder how many people would be interested in seeing it.

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