White-on-white fabric

I consider it a white fabric with an imprinted design that is in a subtlely different shade of white. The fabric reads pretty much solid white -- but when you look closely -- or it catches the light you can see the design.

Pretty, very pretty :-) It is fabric that has a white pattern embossed onto a white base fabric. Hard to explain. The url below is from one of the shops on quiltshops.com I narrowed my search to Fairy Frost just because I love it but there were about 30,000 for "white on white"!

I hope that helps.

Rita

I have heard that it can be hard to hand quilt through WoW- not that I have any personal experience, you understand. :)

Allison (it's MQ for me or not at all!)

Be very persnickety about choosing a WOW. Many years ago I made a quilt top of precious little hummingbirds. Paperpieced and those guys' little beaks were a challenge. Anyhow. The white-on-white defied machine quilting. Now that I'm older and more ruthless, a size 100 jeans needle might have done it but that fabric was such a beast I gave the quilt to Yogi. He likes it fine. I suspect the recipe for making the white design on that white fabric had too much cement in it. Polly

EP, I thinnk Kate's description is perfect. I'm surprised to hear that folks are saying it's hard to hand-quilt (or in Polly's case even MQ) through. That has not been my experience at all and I've used many different WOW's for tops and many other tone-on-tone (same concept - different colors) for tops and/or backs with no difficulties whatsoever. I love WOW or TOT much more than actual solids for those areas that I want the quilt to 'read' solid.

Kim in beautiful, sunny, warm NJ

I was reading one of Diane Gaudynski's book, and she mentioned it as being difficult to MQ, especially as a backing, because it drags. So I figured we were probably talking about some kind of textured surface.

Thanks everybody.

ep

I bought some once that was darn near impossible to handquilt. I can usually handquilt pretty decently, but this one I sure didn't. Talk about some toe-catching stitches. The pattern had little birds and leaves on it. The "tone" in the "tone on tone" almost seemed like a rubbery substance.

Sherry

I really like the look of the WOW also. I saw some new ones at LQS that were block alphabet letters, and one that was cursive alphabet letters. I';d love to use them. Very subtle.

Sherry

Diane Gaudynski warns against using w-o-w fabrics unless you do a sample piece before machine quilting. Some of them leave a dark grey/ black mark in the needle hole. I know this from experience since I took a w-o-w fabric to use in one of her classes. I was the example of what NOT to do! Everybody has a purpose, huh?

LOL and thank you Kathyl. I was sort of thinking maybe my experience with rubberized WOW was rare. Just maybe not if Diane Gaudynski warns about grey holes. That would really upset us. Of course, if you fell in love with one, you could always buy a little and test it for rubber and lead. Polly

"Kathyl"

I guess the stuff used in the printing must vary, I've definitely had some like Diane G describes as being a problem, but I do think she only means as a backing, as in my copy of her book, she describes it dragging, not difficult to needle, though with some of the close spaced designs that doesn't surprise me. I've had some that have bigger patterns apparently printed more finely, don't know if they'd drag or not, but then for a backing why spend money on WoW? If you want white for a back, you might as well use bleached muslin.

Cheers Anne

I'm not sure I follow you Anne. But my class with Diane taught me about using wow anywhere on your quilt...front or back. As a backing, some of them are rather sticky and can cause some drag on the table top when machine quilting. And on the top, some of the w-o-w fabrics will cause a grey mark in each needle hole. I witnessed that one personally. k

Howdy!

15 yrs ago, some of the white-on-white fabric was like a rubbery coating that had been laid on the fabric & then stamp-cut so the secondary white poofed up & stuck to the top of the fabric. The rubbery white-on-top was nearly impossible to handquilt, and not especially machine-friendly, either. (About that time someone wanting to make a Hug quilt asked for w-o-w blocks; there was a loud, collective groan; it was a small Hug quilt.) Then, w/ help from many quilters, the fabric companies wised-up and figured out how to make the w-o-w fabric quilter-friendly. I gave away most of the rubbery w-o-w to a couple of machine quilters. We were all happy about it. ;-D

Ragm> >> What is white-on-white fabric?

curious, I don't know if her book has multiple editions, but the white on white problem is mentioned specifically in the choosing a backing section in my copy, she may not have come across the needle hole problem at that stage. I haven't seen it myself either, but I will be a bit cautious from now on!

Anne

I think your confusion comes from WOW actually referring to two different sorts of fabrics.

One has white fabric printed (dyed) with a design that's just a hair off the "white" of the base fabric. If you dye this fabric, there's a fair chance that the design will go invisible, or harder to find than on the original. But other than the subtlety of the color combination, it's exactly like green fabric with a pink design, or whatever other color combination you prefer.

The other has white fabric printed with something the same color, but it's heavier: if you dye this fabric, the base will take the dye, and you'll have a white design remaining on the colored fabric. (Think puffy fabric paint, but only about .05% of the effect, visually.)

It's the latter that folks refer to as hard to quilt; I find it varies with the fabric, as the amount of stiff dye-resistant material used to do the printing varies. On the other hand, this fabric can be gangs of fun to tie dye. :) But then so can black-on-white.

--pig

Excellent points, Megan. These issues are important but can sometimes be puzzling. To confuse the matter further, I would also mention that there are different 'shades' of WOW, which may or may not influence the quilter's choices.