Free Tool
Fabric Value Finder
Color gets the credit, value does the work. Drop in a photo of your fabric pull and see it the way the finished quilt will — in lights, mediums, and darks.
Drop a photo of your fabrics here
Lay the candidates side by side in even light, snap one photo, drop it in — or paste a screenshot.
Your photo never leaves your browser. Everything happens on this page — nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent anywhere.
How to run a value check
- 1Photograph your fabrics. Lay the candidates side by side in even, indirect light — overlap them slightly so they touch. One photo of the whole stack beats one photo per fabric.
- 2Drop the photo in. Drag it onto the page, choose a file, or paste a screenshot. Processing happens in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
- 3Read the grayscale. Fabrics that merge in grayscale will merge in the quilt. If two prints you meant to contrast look like one gray, swap one for something lighter or darker.
- 4Sort with value steps. Switch to the posterized view to force each fabric into dark, medium, or light — the fastest way to sort a pull for a value-based design.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "value" mean in quilting?
Value is how light or dark a fabric reads, independent of its color. It's what makes a quilt design visible from across the room: a pattern built on value contrast holds up in any colorway, while one built only on color contrast can vanish when the values match. The old saying holds — color gets the credit, value does the work.
How do I check the value of my fabrics?
Remove the color and look at what's left. Lay the candidate fabrics side by side in even light, photograph them, and view the photo in grayscale — exactly what this tool does. Fabrics that blur together in grayscale will blur together in the quilt, no matter how different their colors look.
What is a red value finder, and why does this tool have one?
The classic notion is a piece of red acetate: looking through it strips out most color information so values stand out. It has a famous blind spot — red fabrics disappear behind it and always read as light. The red-filter view here reproduces that tool (blind spot included, for quilters used to it); the grayscale view is the more honest check.
What do the value steps show?
The posterized view sorts every pixel into 2–5 value buckets — dark, medium, light — so borderline fabrics commit to a side. It's the quickest way to answer "is this print a medium or a dark?" for sorting a stash or a scrap quilt. The distribution bar under it shows how much of the photo falls in each bucket.
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
No. The photo is processed entirely in your browser with the canvas element — it is never uploaded, stored, or sent to any server. Close the page and it's gone.
Why do my medium fabrics cause the most trouble?
Mediums are chameleons: next to a dark they read light, next to a light they read dark. That's useful when you want blending, and fatal when a block depends on a crisp line. Check mediums against the specific neighbors they'll touch in the block, not against the whole stack.