What are low volume fabrics?

Low volume fabrics may be subtle, but they can make a big impact in your quilting! These soft, often neutral prints—ranging from delicate text and tiny florals to tone-on-tone geometrics—add texture, depth, and balance without overwhelming your design. In this post, we’ll explore the variety of low volume fabrics available and how they can be used to enhance contrast, highlight focal blocks, or create calm negative space. Whether you’re building a modern quilt or softening a scrappy project, low volumes are the secret to a beautifully balanced finish.

White or off white background fabric with some geometric pattern

These are probably the low volume fabrics I use the most often. They provide extra interest in background fabrics where you would normally use a solid white. They are generally unobtrusive.

Grey Low Volume Fabric

Pale grey fabrics can also be categorised as low volume and can give nice variation when mixed in with lighter low volume fabrics.

Text fabrics

Text fabrics add an extra bit of whimsy into a quilt and make great applique backgrounds.

Coloured Low Volume fabrics

I often include these fabrics if I am making a colourful scrappy quilt.

Novelty Low Volume

These low volume fabrics have a light background but are generally busier. I don’t use them as often but in larger background pieces and where there is high contrast, they can work well and add extra whimsy to a quilt.

These are from different collections.