This year I decided to create a temperature quilt. I’m making a block to represent the high and the low temperatures for every single day in 2023. Sounds good right? Ok – maybe it’s a little crazy to make 365 of the same block. I have to admit – I’ve been so inspired by the many temperature quilts I’ve seen in my research. The colors that represent the temperatures create such an interesting wave-like effect in the completed quilt.
One quilt started my obsession, it was created by fellow Metropolitan Patchwork Guild Member Christie F. It was displayed at the MPS Outdoor Quilt Show in Beaverton Oregon, a couple of years ago. This is her gorgeous quilt:
So – I got myself a calendar to record the temps for every day and created a chart of degrees – broken up into 5-degree segments. Each segment has been assigned a color. I purchased fabrics to correspond with each segment. So far so good – right?
Well, I ran into a stumbling block – I needed to choose a three-color block (High Temp, Low Temp, and Background) – that’s appealing when set in rows and isn’t too complicated. Clearly – that sounds much easier to do than it turned out to be.
I have looked at dozens of different options and nothing felt quite right. I was stumped – and here it is – already March! OK – I needed a new approach. I started looking at blocks again – this time – with an eye toward changing their dimensions to see if that made it more interesting. That did the trick!
Here’s the block I ended up choosing.
This block is normally created with a square center, but I’ve decided to make the center a rectangle and I’m enjoying the proportions so much more for this particular quilt. I love the idea that the fabrics used to represent the high and low temperatures for each day – will look like they are floating on a black background. While I did consider going with a white background – I liked the way the fabrics I chose popped on the black.