Weather Bubble – A Temperature Quilt

I’ve started a new project which I am finding particularly helpful in these difficult times. A month or so ago the Modern Quilt Guild sent a ‘call-out’ for Temperature Quilts for a special exhibit at QuiltCon 2022. You can read more about it on their website here.

I have wanted to make some sort of temperature project for years now, ever since I first heard about them via Tess, one of my ‘craft clubbers’, who was working on a temperature crochet shawl.  I had been planning a temperature embroidery but when I saw the call-out from the MQG I knew it had to be a quilt.

So what is a temperature quilt? It’s a way of using the daily temperature to ‘choose’ the colours you use in whatever block you are making. I have chosen a simple applique circle and decided that the background would be the lowest daily temperature and the circle would be the highest.

I made a list of the temperature range in an average Scottish year and then pulled all these lovely fabrics from my stash. I arranged the colours from cool to warm and assigned each a temperature number (or range of temperatures for the very highest and lowest).

I neatly stacked them (well this is neat for me anyway!) in a storage box before starting my first day (March 28th). That day the lowest temp was 2 and the highest 7 (yes this is Scotland!).

This is when I decided to add another aspect to my particular Temperature quilt. I decided that I didn’t want perfect circles but wanted to draw an ‘organic’ circle every day.

So I decided to link my mood to this part. I would draw my circle to reflect my emotions, a large circle for a good day and a small circle for a bad.

I’m quite a content and cheerful person and hardly ever moody so I am not expecting the size of the circles to change that much. However the current situation is testing us all and you may observe, in some of the more recent photos, that some smaller circles are cropping up as I have wobbly days.

I can’t really tell you how much working on these daily applique blocks has been helping me through these weeks of Lockdown. For a start, with the days seeming to melt into each other, having a small daily routine has been a good thing. Also having to consider each day and how I feel about it has been very centering and mindful. And then working on something for such a long way into the future and that will take me (hopefully) beyond all of this has been very comforting.

Every day I am excited to check the weather app on my phone and find out which colours I will be able to use that day, it’s a real highlight of my day! And then the process of drawing the circle on paper, cutting it out and using it as a template, and then stitching it to the background is very meditative and calming.

I cut my fabric out a quarter inch bigger than the paper template and work tiny gathering stitches close to the edge of the fabric circle. I place the paper in the centre of the wrong side of the fabric and draw the stitches around tightly before securing with extra stitches. After pressing from both sides I pop the paper out, pin the circle to the background and stitch around with tiny neat slip stitches using a matching Aurifil 80wt thread.  I produced a time lapse video of this process and uploaded it to Instagram yesterday. You can view it here. It is very fast! The total opposite of the relaxing slow stitching the process is in reality.

I have started calling these circles my Weather Bubbles and so I think I will use this to name the quilt. On the left you will see the first 9 days which included a first warm day this year! I can’t tell you how excited I am when more oranges and pinks can be used as we reach summer. It’s good to have something to look forward to right now.

If you fancy having a go at a temperature quilt then there are a few blog posts with good ideas like this tutorial by Elm Street Quilts, or check out my friend Linda’s Drunkard’s Path quilt here.

My plan is to keep this going for just over a year. The blocks are 31/2″ and at present I am thinking about making 378 blocks which would be 18 across by 21 down. This would mean a finished quilt of 63″ x 73″ which would be a good size. Currently I am planning to run the blocks from left to right in strips, but will decide more as I go along. I’d also love to have the time to hand quilt this before QuiltCon 2022.

I’ll be posting updates about this here periodically and more often on Instagram. I do find it comforting to be planning for so far into the future!