Low Volume Fabrics

What are low volume fabrics?

Low volume fabrics can be described as basically subtle white, cream, neutral or pale coloured print fabrics often with a delicate self-coloured pattern or subtle design and they are selected to offset the much brighter palette of colours available in many fabric lines. Think of pale floral designs, faint spots or those white fabrics with text and these would be described as low volume – your eye sees them as soft colours even though they are not entirely plain.  Low volume fabrics won’t ‘fight’ with more colourful fabrics and will let those bright prints shine!

How can low volume fabrics be used?

You could use low volume fabrics where the effect of using a solid white fabric is desired, particularly in modern quilts but you don’t want the starkness of a pure white fabric, which can be just as overwhelming as a bright colour. Low volume prints are great for achieving a softer look than a plain white background.

Low volume fabrics are great for adding subtle interest to a quilt design without introducing another strong colour.

I would often choose low volume prints as the background fabrics when you look at a list of quilt fabric requirements or, alternatively, you could build the block pattern using a selection of low volume fabrics and pick one bright fabric as your background to give a different effect.

Where can I buy low volume fabrics online in the UK?

  Here is our pick of the best selection of  online low volume fabric suppliers in the UK.