Temperature quilt: begun!

The temperature quilt is underway!  The prep was different and fun.  First of all, I had to gather my fabrics.  Someone doing a temperature quilt in Manchester advised me to use a different fabric for each degree C, and I'm glad she did, because you definitely need it.  I laid them out in a row, and then put every other one in the row above, to check how they fared when split up a bit.

I scrapped the second-bottom grey, it didn't quite fit, and the bottom grey can be divided into light and dark if need be.  That's for -9, which has only turned up once, so unless we have an unusually cold winter at the end of the year, it won't be a problem.  There was that year, 2010 I think, when the temperatures went down to -16 at night, but that was incredibly unusual, and we still talk of the snows and the difficulty the UK had in dealing with them.

Some fabrics are variably enough patterned that they could cover a few different temperatures, but I think that overall it will give the idea, and I am learning to relax and not worry about whether each fabric tells you the specific temperature unambiguously.  A little bit was cut off each to make a chart.

Next, I had to work out the pattern.  There was just enough freezer paper left, once I cut it up here and taped it together there.  I had been enjoying myself immensely the week before, making every possible chart in a spreadsheet.  That included working out which of the four sections per month would have 7 days and which would have 8 days, and then writing it all down reversed, because with freezer paper you are working in mirror image.

I drew my 4" x 12" sections with rulers, then subdivided them all into 7 or 8 days accordingly, and divided each of those sections into two, varying the proportions according to whether the day or night was longer on that date.  Marking them all up took a while, as they all needed the date, temperatures if the date had passed, and a little up arrow, which has proven to be invaluable.  I still ended up sewing two pieces together the wrong way around last night, but I noticed immediately and it was easily fixed.

Here's what they look like after each day's pieces have been cut up, ironed onto fabric, and the fabric has been marked up and the pieces drawn around.  After this, the pieces of paper are peeled off and binned, and the two pieces are sewn to each other, and then added to the seven or eight-day block they are part of. 

There's one piece for an earlier block where I copied in the wrong temperature and noticed a few days later, but it turned out to be fairly straightforward to unpick the offending piece, make a new paper template for it, and replace it with the right fabric.  It can be comforting to make mistakes early on, and know that you have a way to deal with them.

I was starting with the last block in May, but I wanted to see how this would look for a whole block, so I pulled out what I thought was the previous block for May.  It turned out to be the first block in May instead, leaving me with the two in between to catch up on.  I've now done the second one, so there's only the third to do and then the whole of May is done, as by now I've also finished the last block.  I've never been so interested in the weather forecast, and was downright excited when there was an overnight low 2 degrees that allowed me to use that pretty teal fabric for the first time.  I'll post the set once I've done that third block.

As expected, there are a lot of soft greens and golds together.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what the winter will look like, with those blues and greens, occasional purples and the odd flash of gold.  I've used a few reds so far, but I doubt I'll need them all that much.

It'll also show up starkly how unseasonal the weather is getting, like that worryingly warm patch in February, or the three hot days in April where I ended up basking in the hammock in R's garden in a tasteful nightie, because I didn't have any sundresses to hand.  I've noticed a couple of people on Instagram - Instagram appears to be The Place To Be for these quilts, and I finally sorted out joining - talking about how the weather is "in God's hands", which appears to be code for being climate change deniers.  Gah.  And when I'm seeing so many American quilters in Facebook groups talking about being flooded out, too.