I promised to talk a little more about value and I got sidetracked by life. For my log cabin quilt (which is where the discussion started) I needed darks on one side of the block and lights on the other. The samples in this photo show the extreme light and dark. Most people don't even buy fabrics that dark (but I do).
When I am choosing my fabrics I try to have variations in color, scale, and texture. I could just use one light and one dark and it wouldn't look much different from the first photo. By using different scale (size) of print and choosing fabrics that give a feeling of texture you make a quilt interesting. I realize not everyone uses 100 or more fabrics in a quilt like I do. Even if you were limiting yourself to 12 fabrics, you need the variety within your value ranges so the quilt doesn't have a 'flat' look. So it isn't about color. Every color can be in the light values and every color can be in the dark values. It is the value range that is important.
Here is a lesson I gave on blending the values from light to dark. If you want to see more samples on that subject click on Colorwash in the Labels list on my right side bar.
This is the new group of blocks I made for my ongoing triangle quilt project. I am using just 2 values in each block but I am varying the value ranges from block to block.
Here is one block of each of the 16 that I have made so far. In some of them the contrast between the 2 fabrics is high and in some it is low. I think that gives more interest to a quilt than having just high (or low) contrast in every block.
