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 if anyone wants to join me. If so, I'll create a group.
2 critical aspects of the quilt:
1) You need to track the daily temperature of a city. I'm going to use the airport near where I live since it's the "official" temperature decider in my area.
2) You need to assign a different color for 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. I think the key here is making sure that the temperature ranges you define make sense for the area 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 range will basically be between 30 degrees and 90 degrees. To help me define my ranges and ensure I could expect enough variety in colors I did some research and analysis on the temperatures for my city in 2016 and defined my temperature ranges and colors based on that information. I expect 2017 would be similar to 2016 so I have a general idea of what it might look like. Of course, mother nature could mess with me and play havoc with temperatures next year.
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.
I think the easiest unit to use to represent each day would be a square (or strip/rectangle) of whatever size you prefer. Then just piece them together based on the temperature recorded for each day. I'm planning on doing something a bit more complex than squares or strips because that's just how I am. No need to join me on my craziness.
My plan is to check in on temperatures for the week every Saturday or Sunday using Accuweather or a similar website and basically construct the quilt 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. I think it will be really cool to see the quilt grow over the year and transform from colder temps to warmer temps and then back to colder temps. And if I get behind - no big deal, I can catch up whenever.
And when the quilt is done you essentially have a colorful quilted record of the daily temperatures for 2017. I've read that some people will use a totally different color for each unit that represents a birthday for someone in their family, or uses a unique method for marking a day in which a record was broken. The cool thing is this concept is very customizable to whatever your skillset and what you want to do.
Fabric selection
You could purchase fabric in your desired colors but I'm going scrappy and pulling from my stash. How much fabric of each color you would 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.
Group ?
I'm building my first string of units on January 7th.So what do you think? Anyone want to play along? I think it would be awesome to post pictures of our growing quilts as the year progresses and compare the colors/temperatures.
2 critical aspects of the quilt:
1) You need to track the daily temperature of a city. I'm going to use the airport near where I live since it's the "official" temperature decider in my area.
2) You need to assign a different color for 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. I think the key here is making sure that the temperature ranges you define make sense for the area 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 range will basically be between 30 degrees and 90 degrees. To help me define my ranges and ensure I could expect enough variety in colors I did some research and analysis on the temperatures for my city in 2016 and defined my temperature ranges and colors based on that information. I expect 2017 would be similar to 2016 so I have a general idea of what it might look like. Of course, mother nature could mess with me and play havoc with temperatures next year.
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.
I think the easiest unit to use to represent each day would be a square (or strip/rectangle) of whatever size you prefer. Then just piece them together based on the temperature recorded for each day. I'm planning on doing something a bit more complex than squares or strips because that's just how I am. No need to join me on my craziness.
My plan is to check in on temperatures for the week every Saturday or Sunday using Accuweather or a similar website and basically construct the quilt 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. I think it will be really cool to see the quilt grow over the year and transform from colder temps to warmer temps and then back to colder temps. And if I get behind - no big deal, I can catch up whenever.
And when the quilt is done you essentially have a colorful quilted record of the daily temperatures for 2017. I've read that some people will use a totally different color for each unit that represents a birthday for someone in their family, or uses a unique method for marking a day in which a record was broken. The cool thing is this concept is very customizable to whatever your skillset and what you want to do.
Fabric selection
You could purchase fabric in your desired colors but I'm going scrappy and pulling from my stash. How much fabric of each color you would 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.
Group ?
I'm building my first string of units on January 7th.So what do you think? Anyone want to play along? I think it would be awesome to post pictures of our growing quilts as the year progresses and compare the colors/temperatures.
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