At a glance
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3 yard cut, 108'' long by 65'' wide (165 cm)
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100% cotton fabric, one continuous piece
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Lightweight weave so that the fabric is easy to handle and forgiving for everyday makes (it is on the thinner, slightly sheer side, so worth keeping in mind for projects where coverage matters)
- Black Supreme, a deep flat black with no print and no direction
- Supreme Solids Collection
The fabric that makes every other color in the quilt louder. A solid black background turns ordinary brights into stained glass and gives a scrappy top the discipline it was missing. This one comes as a single 3 yard cut, 108 inches long and 65 inches wide, enough to background a whole quilt top with some left over. Cut into it from any edge. There is no repeat to match and no right way up.
About this black
Black Supreme is a deep, even black with no blue cast and no dusty grey to it. Against it a red stops being red and becomes a lit red. That is not a figure of speech: the eye reads color partly by what surrounds it, and a black ground removes the competition entirely.
Black was the hardest color in the dyer's shed to get right, and for most of textile history nobody could. Early blacks were really very dark browns, blues or greens that faded toward grey within a season. The dependable black came from logwood, a Central American heartwood so valuable in the seventeenth century that ships were built around the trade in it, and it only worked when the cloth was mordanted with iron. That iron is why so many antique quilts now have holes exactly where the black used to be: the mordant slowly ate the cotton it was holding the color onto, and the black pieces crumbled away while the pinks and tans around them survived. Modern black cotton has none of that problem, which is a quietly remarkable thing to be able to say about a fabric this cheap.
The meaning followed the difficulty. Because a true, lasting black was expensive, it became the color of authority and of formal dress long before it became the color of mourning, and it has never stopped reading as deliberate. A black background in a quilt is never accidental. It is a decision, and it shows.
Where this black works
Use it as the ground in an Amish-style quilt, where solid jewel tones sit on black and nothing else is needed; as the frame in a stained glass or mosaic top; as the dark in a half square triangle, rail fence or log cabin; as sashing that separates busy blocks; or as the binding that finishes almost any quilt cleanly. It is also the standard backing for a bright, high contrast top when you do not want the front showing through from behind.
At 65 inches it is wide enough to back a quilt up to 57 inches across in one piece, with no center seam to match, press or quilt over. Beyond quilting it makes up well as a tablecloth, a runner, curtains, a tote, an apron, or the lining of a bag.
What to put beside it
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Saturated jewel tones, ruby, emerald, sapphire, amethyst, the classic Amish palette
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White for the sharpest contrast a quilt can make
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Hot pink, turquoise and lime if you want the quilt to glow
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Ochre, mustard and warm gold, which black flatters more than any other ground
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Grey and charcoal for a monochrome top with texture instead of color
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Any scrappy mix, because black gives a chaotic pile of prints a reason to sit together
Good to know
65 inches is wide, but it is not the 108 inch wide backing sold for king quilts. If you are backing a king, buy the 108 inch wide quilt backing fabric.
Dark cottons can release a little dye in the first wash. Wash this one on its own the first time, or with like colors, before putting it next to a white.
Buy two or more cuts and the quantity discount comes off on its own at checkout. Two cuts take 10% off, four take 15%, six take 20%.
Black cotton fabric by the yard, cut and shipped from our own warehouse.
