Jumping in on the Temperature Quilt Craze

I've watched many variations of the temperature quilt develop over the past few years on Instagram, and I've really liked a lot of them. But it wasn't until I saw Kelly's (of @itsjustsew) version that I fell in love and knew I had to make one. So I hope imitation is the sincerest form of flattery because I'm totally copying her idea!

Kelly used JeliQuilt's paper piecing pattern called Juicy Goosey to create circles of flying geese with each goose representing the high temperature for a day and the surrounding background representing the low temperature. When you sew four sections of geese together, it creates a circle for each month. 

I decided to use a fat quarter bundle of Spritz Tonals from Connecting Threads for my high temps and I arranged the rainbow of colors from dark purple at the lowest to a dark burgundy at the highest end of the range. Each color represents five degrees in a range from zero and below to 111 and above.

For the lows I selected nine Moda Bella Solids in a gradiant range of grays. Each hue of gray represents 10 degrees from zero and below to 80 degrees. 

My fabric finally arrived this weekend so today I decided to tackle the first quarter of January. Before starting to sew, I decided to enlarge the pattern as large as I could fit on an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper and then I measured each paper piecing section and made a cutting chart of what size each piece needs to be. I want my monthly circle blocks to be as large as possible, which will be 15" finished.

I also made high and low fabric charts and marked the selvedge of each fabric to help me keep track of what temperature range each color represents.

I also made notes of fabric lines and pattern used for future 'senior moments'. I put my charts in a plastic sleeve to keep the fabrics nice and neat.

So I have eight days or one quarter section of the month complete, which took me most of the afternoon to do. Hopefully the process will go a little faster as I become more proficient at paper piecing. I have done a little paper piecing in the past but it always takes me a little bit to remember how to do it and get into a rhythm. I'll share again when I have the month of January complete.

Have you made a temperature quilt? Want to join me in the fun and keep me accountable for getting each month completed? 

~Sharla

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