Since starting to construct my low-ish volume quilt top a few weeks ago I've had several people ask me what Low Volume means. So I thought it was a great time to write a blog post explaining this concept.
What quilters often refer to as low volume fabrics are simply fabrics that have a neutral background like white, light beige, cream or very pale grey and have a print that is subtle.
See below my recently completed quilt top that has spawned all these questions. I have been referring to this as low-ish volume because many of the prints on the fabrics aren't very subtle they are bolder than what I think of as low volume, but when you stand back 5 yards from the quilt top the dominant colours are still the neutral background fabrics.
Here's a close up so you can see the bold prints which are quite distinct:
These fabrics could also be called medium volume but it just doesn't have the same ring to it and doesn't feel quite right to me so I ended up using the term low-ish volume when describing this quilt.
I store low and low-ish volume fabrics together in my stash, so I consider them all the same main category of low volume but some are closer to the ideal than others.
There are an endless array of ways we can describe, organise and refer to quilt fabrics, sometimes it's just about what you feel is the best term.
So low volume is just a way of categorizing these types of fabrics. It is a brief descriptor that describes the style of fabric in just two words.
Here's a couple of previous projects in which I used low volume (plus some low-ish volume) fabrics as the background for scrap quilts:
Example 1 - 2018 Scrappy Heart quilt centre
So these are very versatile fabrics that work well as background fabrics when teamed with bright high contrast fabrics.
TIP: be sure when you are color sorting scraps you have a category for low volume so that you can make your own low volume scrap quilt one day!