Hey quilter bees, it's Mitzie here!
If you're working through the Thin Air Quilt Along — or really any Jittery Wings controlled improv pattern — you already know the drill. We sort our pieces and blocks into four groups, lightest to darkest, all the way through the pattern. It's a system I've built out over time, and it works on the older patterns too, not just the new ones.
But this week I got a great question from Sue in the Hive, and it's one I bet a lot of you have wondered about too. She said she's confident with her lightest and darkest blocks, but what about the two groups in the middle?
I love to work through complicated problems with a system. So, me being me, I made a value guide.
Download the Block Sorting Value Guide Here.
The value guide has all four groups on it, side by side, getting darker as you move down the line: group one, group two, group three, group four. Print it out, cut the blocks apart, and lay them out in order on a plain white surface.
Now take your fabric and lay it right up next to each printed swatch. That side-by-side comparison does something your eye can't quite do on its own: it shows you where a color actually sits on the scale.
Here's the thing I found sorting through my own scrap bin: a fabric that looks black in isolation might have a good bit of pink or brown mixed in, and once you set it next to the value guide, it reads lighter than you thought. That's the whole point of the exercise. It's not about getting a "correct" answer — it's about building a gradient, not a hard line. If a piece feels like it could go in either of two neighboring groups, it usually doesn't matter much which one you pick. You're aiming for a scale, not perfection.
When a Block Has More Than One Color
Multicolor blocks add a wrinkle, but the same logic still holds. Start with whichever color takes up the most real estate and match that against the value guide first. If the block also carries a lot of a different-value color, let that pull your decision a little. When two colors in a block are close in value, split the difference and place it in the middle group. A little bit of "in-between" scattered through the quilt isn't a problem — it's what keeps the gradient looking natural.
A Few Rules of Thumb
- Anything sheer or see-through usually reads light.
- If a color is dramatically darker than everything around it, let it go in that darker group — it'll read as a nice pop of contrast rather than a mistake.
- True mediums exist too. Not everything needs to be forced toward one side.
- If your fabric pull doesn't include any true darks, your scale may shift, and that's fine — sort relative to what you have.
Grab the value guide and give it a try on your own group two and group three pieces. It makes the "which pile does this go in" question a whole lot less mysterious.
Happy quilting, Mitzie
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