Temperature Quilt Tuesday

I have not been consistent about posting my temperature quilt progress!  Let's see if I can do better for what remains of the year.  Here is the quilt top so far, up to date through August 31. It's been rather fun to let go and allow the daily temperatures to select color placement for me.

I photographed it sideways because my fence is short.  January is on the far left, August on the far right.  You can see it has been hot this summer.  The darkest red is for everything above 30 degrees Celcius (above 86 F), and a lot of those were hovering in the mid-thirties C (mid 90s F).

I underestimated how many of those days we'd have.  Either my memory of past summers is poor or we have had a particularly hot one in 2020. I suppose I could go look up past years' data, but I'm really not that motivated! At any rate, I ran out of the dark red and had to scoot to the quilt shop for more.  I may or may not have left the store with other pretties to make the trip worthwhile.

OK.  More fabric did come home with me.  More on that another time, after I take pretty pictures of pretty fabric :)

In the meantime, you can still get your copy of the Temperature Quilt pattern here.  You can start now and record through next summer, or you can catch up all at once on this year's data, or you can tuck the pattern away for next calendar year. Don't forget to check out my post from March about getting organised for Temp Quilt success.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Temp Quilt Tuesday

Though I had planned to share my Temperature Quilt progress every Tuesday, here we are three weeks since my last update.  Squirrels invaded my sewing room, and the temperature quilt was neglected for a little while. I think I'll revise my Temp quilt reporting plan to share just once a month, on the first Tuesday of the month.

The Red Scrap Squirrel was much more insistent that I expected.  It's related to the temperature quilt though.  It starts out with the same block and block layout.  I shared the top a couple of posts ago.  What became time consuming was the quilting.  I generally don't quilt things very densely but this squirrel really liked playing with my Westalee quilting rulers.

I tried freemotion swirls in the white space but it looked too busy so I stopped before it was too overwhelming to pick out.  Once I started straight lines, they turned into matchstick quilting.  I love the look, but it's a little wee bit time consuming!  The Sashlee ruler helped speed thing up a bit though, as it was really easy to line up at even intervals.

I quilted the borders with the 3" feather template and a circle where I wanted to switch feather orientation.  That didn't take too long to quilt, though I wish I had spent a little more time planning what to do in the corners.  One corner in particular has a weird gap in quilting.

I'm very pleased to report that this runner was made entirely from scraps.  Even the batting, backing and binding came from the scrap bin!  It's a small project, so it made a very small dent, but it's a dent, and a good reminder that I don't need to wait to have time to make a large quilt to use up some bits and pieces.

After finishing this on Sunday evening, I finally gave the temperature quilt some attention.  I'm now all caught up to February 2nd.

The two block below the row are the beginning of the February row.  I wonder how annoyed people would be if I wished for a few more colder days this month just so I could have a few more of those deeper blue pieces you can see in the middle of the January row? 

Thinking outside the pattern

As you know if you have been reading along these last few weeks, my plans for this year include making a temperature quilt and reducing my stash of scraps.  Just look at what Amy, who blogs at A Quilting Sheep,  has done with my free temperature quilt pattern and scraps.

I had been wondering how to use up my small scraps, and a perfect design was sitting right there on my design wall as my tempearature quilt takes shape.  I can start a whole new quilt, skipping the temperature part for this one but using the block design and layout to use up scraps! The wheels in my head are turning...

Amy has written a great blog post with suggestions for using my free pattern for quilts other than a temperature quilt, and even shares her measurements for larger blocks.  I encourage you to hop over there for inspiration.  Thanks for reaching out to me, Amy, and for thinking outside the pattern!

I might have started a valentine project using my red scraps and Amy's creative nudge...

Temp Quilt Tuesday 01/13/2020

When I am enthusiastic about a quilt design, I want to sew it up right now to see if it turns out as well as what I see in my mind's eye.  I thoroughly enjoyed designing my temperature quilt, picking out the colours, organizing and labeling the fabric and cutting into my Grunge fabrics to get started.  Here's where the quilt stands so far.

The strip is up to date up to yesterday's temperatures.  The end with the safety pin in January 1st. The high temperature for each day is on top, the low is on the bottom.  The wavy pattern means nothing.  I just looks pleasing to my eye. :)

This was fun to sew.  It was not fun to come to a screeching halt because I have to wait for daily data!  I had some excitement and momentum built up!

This will be an exercise in patience, but in a good way.  It will make me slow down and savour the process of sewing. I look forward to adding a new colors as the temperature drops and rises.  I get a kick out of the little outliers, like that nice warm yellow popping up on January 9th, when we enjoyed an unusually warm day for January (too bad I spent the mild part of the day inside at work!)

I have made a slight change to my color key.  When the fabric was cut down to 2" squares, it was hard to tell Turquoise and Sapphire apart, despite what the names suggest.  I think the purple "distressed" print on both may have been what caused the problem.  I removed the Sapphire, bumped Bright Sky and Royal up one temperature range each and added a different color (whose name and number I forgot to note) between Royal and Navy.  I think I'm all set now.

In an effort to stay motivated and caught up with this year-long project, I plan to post a progress picture every Tuesday.  If you are sewing a temperature quilt, using my free pattern or any other design, I'd love to follow your progress as well.  I'll see if I can sort out a linky party option for next time.  For now, lease leave a link to your temperature quilt post in the comments.

If you're on Instagram, use the hashtags #tempquilttuesday,  #temperaturequilt2020, or #CQDtempquilt and I will find you.  Also, @Twiddletails has been using #tempquilt2020 and #tempquiltalong for her temperature quilt quilt along. There is a lot of inspiration there, and she shares tips and where to get daily weather data on her blog.

Happy quilting and weather watching!

Linking up with

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Temperature Quilt 2020

You may have seen Temperature Quilt projects popping up on blogs and social media feeds over the last few years.  The idea is to represent temperatures with colours and to document the temperature each day by making a quilt block with the corresponding colour.  At the end of the year, you have a quilt documenting temperature variations through the year.  If you google "temperature quilt", or do a search on Pinterest or Instagram, you'll see lots of cool quilts.  Some even manage to work precipitation data into their daily block!

Fabric selection and quilt plan for 2020 Temperature Quilt

This year I gave in and decided too join in, but I had trouble choosing a design.  I liked the idea of HST, with one half representing the daily maximum temperature, and the other the daily minimum.  However, I also liked the idea of having one row or column per month, so I could easily process the data in the quilt (because I'm nerdy that way).  Using squares in a quilt like that ended up with a weird aspect ratio, either long and skinny, or short and fat.  I also decided I needed a little bit of blank space to rest my eyes.

Temperature Quilt 2020 plan, 53" x 70"

I couldn't find any design online that ticked all the boxes for me, so I played in EQ8 and came up with this design:  one row per month, daily high temp on top, daily low on the bottom, and blank space for the eyes.  The daily temperatures through the year will determine color placement, but I couldn't let go of design control quite enough to jump in without knowing generally how things might look. I used Weather Underground data for 2019 to color in my design in EQ8.

Tuesday I headed off to the quilt shop for fabric. Choosing a "basics" line seemed like a good idea, since I can only estimate how much of each color I'll need.  Mother Nature will have the final say on temperature distribution! I chose Moda Grunge because my local shop stocks all the available colors, so I had a good selection to choose from.  Last night after work I made a colour key so I would know what fabric to use each day, and added a bit of information to help me identify the exact colour if I need to buy more later in the year.

I was all set to cut, then it occurred to me that labeling each fabric with its corresponding temperature range might also speed things up a bit on a daily basis, instead of having to compare my fabrics to the swatches every day.

As I cut strips for the temperatures so far this year,  I realized I would only cut one square at a time as needed, and I wouldn't want to have to compare the strips to the swatches either, so the strips acquired labels as well.  What can I say, I like labels!

Just a note about the temperatures you can see in my pictures: I'm recording temperatures in Celcius, because after 16 years in the US, I still only have a general idea of what Farenheit numbers feel like. I'm much more at ease conversing in Celcius.  It's odd.  Pounds, feet, inches give me no trouble, but I just haven't been able to adjust my temperature units!

So, I'm all set to start my Temperature Quilt.  I only have a little over a week to catch up on, then I can just keep up with a few seams a day.

(Update 03/18/2020:  I have an update here with tips on getting even more organised for when you need to get caught up on missed days.)

If you would like to join me, google "temperature quilt" and see if any of the designs that pop up appeal to you, or you can use mine.  I wrote instructions to share - and they include a Farenheit scale as well as Celcius.  You can download them here.  Feel free to use them, but if you wish to share them with friends, I ask that you send them here to download their own copy, please and thank you.

If you join in, I'd love to see your quilts come together through the year. Sharing this was a rather impromptu affair, so I haven't worked out the details of how we can all share our progress with each other.  I just wanted to get the instructions posted before too much of the year had passed so there wouldn't be too much catching up required.  I'll post again with my progress and some suggestions about how to share yours...maybe an instagram hashtag, or a FB group, or a linky here on the blog...or some combination.  Ideas are welcome!