Black and White Quilt Patterns

With all the talk about loud colour in my last post, I thought I’d try something completely different and look at black and white quilt patterns this week. It can be fun to be a contrarian sometimes, right?

Black and White Together

Before I delve into some quilt patterns, let’s have a chat about black and white as a colour palette.

To me, black and white is a timeless colour palette that has been used for interiors for centuries. (My mind goes immediately to the black and white tiled foyer that turns up in many a historical movie.) The combination of black and white gives an air of elegance and sophistication (nothing says fancy like ‘oh, I don’t do colour’). And let’s be honest, sometimes choosing colours for a quilt is daunting. You can bypass all that a lot quicker with a black and white quilt!

Black and white is quite versatile, too. It can be used in a variety of settings to create a range of moods. It’s common in both traditional and contemporary settings, and it can be used to make a strong, bold statement or create a more serene and zen-like feel.

Black and White in Quilt Patterns

When it comes to quilting, black and white is a great palette as it provides fabulous contrast for showcasing quilt patterns and designs.

If you’re considering a black and white quilt pattern, one of the first things you want to think about is the balance of the two colours. Do you want your quilt to be mainly white with some black or mainly black with some white? Or a 50/50ish balance between the two colours?

The types of fabrics used will also change the balance of the two colours. Pure black and white solids will be fairly stark. Patterned fabrics or low volume light fabrics will soften the effect. So if you have a pattern that skews more black or more white, you can make it more even with patterned fabrics instead of solids. Although they’ll still read black or white, I think they mellow out the contrast a little.

And of course it doesn’t have to be ALL black and white. Some strategically placed dark greys can add some shadowing and just a bit of colour change to break things up. Adding some grey is also handy if you have a quilt pattern that doesn’t convert perfectly to a two-colour quilt pattern. If you don’t have clean lines between the two colours, sometimes you need to add a third fabric to allow the different areas of black and white to stand apart from each other. Something to keep in mind, anyway.

Don’t Forget to Consider the Quilting

The other great thing about working with black and white quilt patterns is all that negative space! If you enjoy the actual quilting part of making a quilt, you’ll love the canvas provided by a black and white quilt. You’ll really get the chance to show off your mad quilting skills! (I especially love graffitti style quilting on a black and white quilt.)

Even if you’re not a confident Free Motion Quilter (FMQ) you can still create some amazing texture on a black and white quilt with straight line quilting. If you’re making quite a traditional quilt then the use of more contemporary quilting designs can be a nice juxtaposition. And of course, a modern quilt will look right at home with all that straight line texture.

Black and White Fabrics

If you’re Australian like me, I love to find black and white fabric locally at The Next Stitch, Fabric Pixie and Scribbly Gum.

For those fabrics that are harder to source locally in Oz, you can find an excellent range of quilting fabric at the Fat Quarter Shop and Hawthorne Threads. These are great online fabric shops for those in North America.

Black and White Quilt Patterns

Let’s delve into some quilt patterns, shall we?

Go West

I’ve often thought about how my Go West pattern would look in black and white. Here’s the original version:

And here’s how it looks in black and white – a fun contemporary quilt, right?

It looks different as there are a few spots where a line is met by more than two colours. In those cases, there’ll be the joining of shapes that would have normally stayed separate if more than 2 colours were used.

I also think Go West looks great with a cheeky little pop of colour. (I know this is a post on black and white quilt patterns, but the mix can be made even better sometimes with a little dab of colour.)

Just adding in some turquoise in the centre motif keeps that separation and adds a fun pop of colour. Here it is again, but with a turquoise binding:

I think it would be cute with a coral pop as well (Kona’s Colour of the Year, Crush for instance).

Jelly Roll Compatible Quilt Patterns

Here’s the Stash Knockout Pattern in black and white. Well, I kind of went black, white and bone to give the light fabrics a bit of interest. I think this one would look great with a black solid and low volumes for the light fabrics too. Don’t forget this pattern is jelly roll compatible.

If black and white is a bit stark for you, don’t forget the not-quite-white options such as bone, ivory, light tan and beige. Just a little bit of colour in the lights can tone down the contrast and make for a wonderful modern quilt.

Looking at jelly roll compatible patterns, the Star Sweep pattern can also be used with jelly rolls. This version below is mocked-up in black, white and a grunge silver/grey.

Easy Disappearing Nine Patch Quilt Pattern

If you’re looking for a quick, easy, FQ friendly pattern then the Easy Disappearing Nine Patch pattern is a good one. It’s a great beginner quilt pattern and a classic quilt pattern. My pattern gives instructions for a random layout and also for a more ordered, colour gradation layout. Here’s the latter below, in Halloween colours:

This Halloween version is very close to monochrome already. We just need to swap out the orange for white and we get this monochromatic quilt:

If you want to stick to pure black and white you can of course go for a big random mix of the two. Or you might like to keep the gradation layout but use black/white/black/white like this:

I do like the pixelated feel of that one. If you prefer, you can go with black at both ends and all your lights in the centre:

It’s a bit more balanced and also gives off a Lego vibe, which I rather enjoy. You can find the Easy Disappearing Nine Patch pattern here.

Triangle Falls

Row quilts are generally great for converting to black and white quilts as you can easily achieve separation of colours. The Triangle Falls quilt pattern is essentially a row quilt, even if the rows are a little wonky and have a decorative triangle.

The black and white layout gives me a bit of a modified harlequin feel.

Triangle Falls can also be made with different coloured accent triangles, if preferred. You could make all the triangles the one colour:

Or you could make each row different – perhaps a rainbow progression? We quilters do love a rainbow!

And to keep with the theme of adding an extra colour, here’s a version with a bit of blue thrown in.

Modern Black and White Quilt Patterns

The Plus Side in Black and White

The Plus Side quilt pattern is quite versatile in that the blocks can be rotated to create secondary patterns.

I’m very fond of the off-centre, radiating layout seen in colour here below:

Taking the pattern down to just black and white really brings out the ‘radiating’ in this layout. It makes for quite a modern black and white quilt pattern.

If you’d like to add some interest, there’s the option to twist some of the edge blocks around to break up the radiating lines a little:

The Plus Side pattern is also fun with the addition of a third colour. Once you’ve decided on your colour, you need to choose if it will sub in for white or for black. Below I’m using bronze (I’m thinking an Essex linen metallic) in place of a white layer. I think a bit of sparkle would be amazing.

Here’s blue replacing white in the same layout:

And below here’s how it looks with the blue replacing a white layer instead. I love the subtle differences between the two. The one above reads darker overall (both the quilt and the blue) than the one below (even though it’s the exact same blue).

Just for fun I added in some darker blue cross halves too. I just wanted to see what it would look like.

The Plus Side is a great contemporary quilt pattern that encourages colour play and experimenting with secondary patterns.

Radiant Quilt Pattern

Radiant is my latest quilt pattern, designed specifically to be a 2 colour quilt. So I knew it would look great in black and white (I’ve gone with charcoal here):

Radiant is also a great pattern if you want to pop in a sneaky bit of colour. It’s very easy to swap out the centre squares for a colour of your choice. I chose the yellow family for my contrast this time, with four different yellows of increasing value. Here we have the darker yellow in the middle column, radiating out to light yellow:

In this next version I’ve reversed it. The lightest yellow is in the centre and it increases to a dark gold at the edges:

I love the Radiant (and Diamonds in the Deep) quilt patterns for making sports team quilts. Most sports team colours have a main, background colour and then two contrasting colours which they use in moderation. These two quilt patterns are perfectly proportioned for this purpose.

Free Black and White Quilt Patterns

Before I sign off on this rapidly growing blog post I thought I’d direct you to a few free baby size quilt tutorials I have at Bonjour Quilts (and check out how they’d look in black and white).

Black and White Broken Dishes

The Broken Dishes pattern is such a classic so you know it will look amazing in black and white. I’d love to see it with solid black fabric and a scrappy mix of low volume fabrics. Here’s a version I sewed in blues and low volumes. If you squint your eyes and think of black I’m sure you can imagine how it would look.

The Broken Dishes baby size quilt tutorial can also be made in larger sizes. Throw, twin, queen and king size options are in the full pattern in the pattern shop.

When You Wish…in Black and White

The When You Wish…baby mat pattern tutorial has proved very popular over the years. However, as you can see below, it really leans heavily into a rainbow palette.

So how will it go converted to black and white? Fortunately it has good, clean delineation between the colour blocks so it was pretty easy to change it to just two colours. It makes a great geometric quilt perfect for a beginner quilter. 

I have to say I think this is a great contender for a bright coloured binding. It really helps that star shine and makes for a modern black and white quilt pattern.

Colour Explosion Quilt in Black and White

I really wasn’t sure how the Colour Explosion tutorial would go. First of all, there’s the name! Maybe we should call the black and white version Colour Implosion. Or Colour Exsanguination?!

The pattern consists of triangle pairs across each row, with each row having only 2 colours. This made it a good candidate for black and white given the clean lines in the pattern. There are two ways you can make this pattern black and white, depending on the placement of the colours.

A nice modern baby quilt.

Also nice. It really comes down to which you prefer.

As a quick aside, I changed just one side of the triangles to black and kept the other side colourful and really liked the result. Here’s one in a warm colourway:

And here it is in a cool colourway:

But back to the black and white. Here’s the version I really loved – the queen size (found in the digital quilt pattern in my shop).

I love it as a purely black and white quilt pattern, but I also love it with a central column in turquoise:

And here with a column and some turquoise edges:

But if that’s too much turquoise you could tone it done and confine it just to the centre triangles. So many great choices to make a gorgeous quilt with this one.

Time to Wrap It Up

That’s a lot of quilts, so thank you if you’ve read this far. I had a great time recolouring these patterns and enjoyed seeing these designs with new eyes. The problem is now I’ve made them in black and white I want to see them in navy and white too. I reeeeeally love navy! But that will have to be for another post because this one almost needs a bathroom break in the middle.

Have fun imagining what you can get up to with black and white fabrics, solids, patterns and low volumes. I know you’ll be able to make some heirloom-worthy, truly stunning quilts.

‘Til next time, Kirsty

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