New Temperature Quilt
January 3, 2024
Hi!
Happy New Year!!
I hope wherever you were, and however you celebrated the coming of the New Year, that you had a good night, and that 2024 will be a really great year for you.
Today I wanted to share my new Temperature Quilt project for this year with you. They say telling someone makes you accountable, so here goes!! I kind of opted out for the last couple of years, and now by making it official, I’m committed for this year.
I had a bunch of ideas, and I still quite like several of them, but I have now decided on a hexie quilt for this year, and I’m sure I can manage to find a few minutes each day to whip up another little hexie.
In case you’re looking for a pattern, and wanting to give this a go, all the details you’ll need for this one are following…
So here’s my draft quilt:
There are 12 diamonds in total – one for each month.
Within each diamond are 4 Grandmother’s Garden hexie arrangements – each is made of 7 hexies, so that’s one per week. I figured I’d start with the middle hexie, and add one around each day until we’re done.
Yes – for those of you who have quick math skills – that’s only 28 days, so I have added 3 (light blue) hexies at each end and in the middle, and these will be the extra days of the month if required.
Don’t ask about the background yet – I may be sick of hexies by then, but I figure I’ll decide that at the end of the year.
And the colours?
Ta Dah!!!
The frame around each diamond will be blue, the light yellow hexies around my daily ones will be the mustard yellow, and that pretty Aboriginal print fabric will be used where the (darker brown) hexie points meet. I was thinking about maybe fussy cutting, but we’ll see…
And as for the colours – this year I have 10.
I’m working in degrees centigrade, and I just divided them up into 5 degree groupings, so it’s minus to 0 degrees as the palest blue on the left hand side, then 1-5 deg, 6-10 deg, 11-15 deg, then yellow starts with 16-20 deg, 21-25 deg, 26-30 deg, 31-35 deg, 36-40 deg and 41+ degrees to finish with that deep maroon red.
Where I live, we will have a few minus mornings in winter, and we will go above 40 for a few more days in summer.
Hexies
I’ve decided to record the minimum and maximum temperatures for each day, and I figured the best way to do this will be with half hexies.
I’m using 2 1/2 inch hexies, and I cut some of my fabrics into strips, measuring 3 1/2 x 2 inches.
This way I can sew them together, then cover the hexie shape with that piece of fabric.
I am planning on setting them a bit sideways on the middle hexie, using the minimum temperatures to kind of pinwheel out from the middle. I thought that might give an interesting effect, and I guess we’ll see…
For the centres (and the extra days) I’m going to use a 1 inch hexie for the minimum and a single bigger hexie for the maximum temperature.
…Like so…!
And so now, I have this for my first two days –
I’m hoping that practice will make more perfect, as far as managing to centre the little hexie, but I don’t think you’ll really notice in the end, so I left it where it is.
So the 1st January was 15 – 22 degrees, and the 2nd was 17-26. Today we got to 31 degrees, so I’ll be able to use a new colour too!
Based on past experience, my main advice is stay up to date. Once you get past a week, catching up gets a little more daunting. I recommend pre-cutting fabric, as that makes it so much easier to just pick up and sew, and I’ve set myself a daily alarm for 4pm to record the temperature each day, as I also know from experience just how tricky it can be to find accurate historical temperatures once that day has gone(!).
Let me know if you do decide to give this version or any other temperature quilt a go, and we can share updates and keep each other accountable to get it finished.
Enjoy the start of your New Year,
Regards,
2 responses to “New Temperature Quilt”
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I love the colors that you picked. Can you share what they are?
Hi Cherie,
Thanks for your feedback – I love these colours too, and I’m so sorry – they are not Kona colours, and I just grabbed them at my local shop, and I didn’t think to record the names off the bolts before I brought the fabric home. The photo is fairly true to colour if you can somehow match off that..??