2017 Temperature Quilt
 

Yesterday I stumbled across a new to me idea on the internet that I am absolutely in Love with. It's called a temperature quilt. Let's see if I can explain this in an understandable way and see if anyone wants to join me.

2 critical aspects of the quilt:
1) The quilt is based on the daily temperature for the same city for every day of the year. You do not need to actually record the temperatures. There are multiple websites that track daily temperatures. You can reference those sites when you want to work on this quilt. One example of a site that tracks and records temperatures is www.accuweather.com.

2) You need to assign a different color for your different ranges of temperatures. For example, perhaps 90-100 degrees would be assigned the color red whereas 20-30 degrees would be assigned the color blue. The important factor is making sure that the temperature ranges you define make sense for the city you want to track. For example, I live in Western Washington and we rarely get hotter than 90 degrees and rarely get colder than 30 degrees so my temperature range will basically be between 30 degrees and 90 degrees. Do not feel obligated to use the "typical" warm/cool color ranges. Use whatever colors you love.

The Quilt Itself
Essentially the quilt is made of 365 units with one unit to represent the temperature for each day of the year. So in my above example, if on January 2nd the temperature was 30 degrees I would make a unit that is blue. If on July 1st the temperature was 93 degrees I would make a unit that is red.

The quilt can be made out of whatever unit you want. I think the easiest unit to use to represent each day would be a square of whatever size you prefer. Then just piece your units together based on the temperature recorded for each day.

Your creativity is the limit.
Want to use strips/rectangles, hexagons, tumblers, apple cores, etc. instead of squares? Go for it!!
Want to sew your units into rows? Go for it!!
Want to sew your units into columns? Go for it !!

You do not need to work on this quilt every day. My plan is to check in on temperatures for the week every Saturday or Sunday using www.accuweather.com and construct my quilt each weekend as the weeks go on. It shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes each week to add the additional 5-7 units and attach them to previously constructed units.

Fabric selection
You could purchase fabric in your desired colors but I'm using my scraps. How much fabric of each color you need is completely dependent on the colors you select, the temperature ranges you define and the number of days that fall within each temperature range.

Feel free to share your plan for your units, layout, temperature ranges, colors, etc.

Here's my plan:
I live in Western WA and our temperatures generally range between 30 and 90 degrees in any given year. We do not get a huge range of temps so for my city using increments of 5 degrees makes the most sense for me in order to get a good color variation. If I didn't want much of a color variation I would define my ranges in 10 degree increments.

My range is:
[TABLE="class: cms_table_grid, width: 500, align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]Temperature Range[/TD]
[TD]Color[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]< 31[/TD]
[TD]Dark Purple[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]31-35[/TD]
[TD]Light Purple[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]36-40[/TD]
[TD]Dark Blue[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]41-45[/TD]
[TD]Light Blue[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]46-50[/TD]
[TD]Dark Teal[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]51-55[/TD]
[TD]Light Teal[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]56-60[/TD]
[TD]Dark Green[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]61-65[/TD]
[TD]Light Green[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]66-70[/TD]
[TD]Light Yellow[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]71-75[/TD]
[TD]Dark Yellow[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]76-80[/TD]
[TD]Light Orange[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]81-85[/TD]
[TD]Dark Orange[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]86-90[/TD]
[TD]Dark Pink[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]> 90[/TD]
[TD]Red[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


My Units and Layout
My units are going to be HSTs with the top half representing the highest temp for the day and the lower half representing the lowest temp for the day. I "think" I am making 2" HSTs to finish at 1.5" squares.

I am going to sew my HSTs into columns for each month. So first column = January (31 HSTs), 2nd column = sashing, 3rd column = February (28 HSTs), 4th column = sashing, etc. Since January will have 31 HSTs and February will only have 28 I will add 3 solid colored squares to the bottom of February's HSTs. These will be the same color as the sashing. Undecided on the color although I know I do not want it to be any of the colors used in my temperature ranges. It will likely be white, black or gray.

Based on my calculations my quilt should end up around 28.75 x 38.75 or 31.25 x 38.75 depending on whether or not I add side borders to make it a bit wider. This is perfect for my desire to make this into a wall quilt as opposed to a bed quilt.

CUte idea. Think I may give it a try. Saved your idea for Jan.

Very interesting indeed. I'll think about it:)

Huummmm...... Good idea.

What a great idea. I may have to give this one a try.

I've heard some are doing it with HST for high and low.

This is such a great idea. I will use 2" finished HST's making it a little larger. I already have many 2.5 squares on hand. Now to decide on my color arrangement. We have highs over 100 and lows in the teens occasionally. I live about 65 miles due East from the Pacific Ocean.

Love this idea, I saved it too! Thanks so much for sharing!