Flimsy Alert! ~ 2021 Temperature Quilt

My 2021 Temperature Quilt measures 57.5 x 60.5 inches

If you've had thoughts of doing a temperature quilt, there's a really terrific group for that on Facebook: Twiddletails Temperature Quilt Along. Don't let the name fool you - this is an open-play group where lots of people are doing their own thing. Tons of amazing ideas in there!

For mine, I used the 2" Perfect Circles templates to turn the edges under, glued them onto 3.5" squares, and then used a teeny tiny blanket stitch with my silk hand applique threads to stitch them down. I used paper off my newsprint end-roll as a stabilizer for that, so when each stack was stitched, I then got more TV time to pull the papers off, tie the ends, and snip out the background from under the dots.

I used the back-basting method to do turned-edge hand applique for all the words, and the 1.25 inch template to turn edges under from background cut-outs of all the lower temperatures. I had to cut fresh circles from my fabrics for everything above 71 degrees (our "hottest" night last year). We had a pretty mild summer last year - never over 95, so I didn't get to use the whisper pink or blinding white colors that I'd planned for 96-99 and 100+.  Our lowest low was -14. Nice huge range, but you can see by the fairly uniform background colors that our nights stay cool even when we get 95-degree days.  (They do that even when we get 104-degree days, but you can't see that in action for 2021.) 

And that is why we don't have the expense of an AC installation or maintenance up here in our little micro-climate! There really are only a couple of days during the summertime when you catch yourself thinking, "yeah, air conditioning would be nice right now."  But that only lasts a couple of hours before the ceiling fan and open windows clear out the heat again as the temperature nosedives into the evening.

But then the trade-off is the need to run humidifiers all winter, because the heater on top of an already-dry climate sucks the tiny bit of moisture we do have right out of the air so that we'll get 12% humidity in here without the humidifiers. So you fill their tanks, run them, clean them periodically, refill, repeat ad nauseum. I still like this climate so much better than the Florida climate we used to live in.  :)  

That makes another opening in my active BOM rotation, and I have the perfect colorful project to slip in: Alaska Rainbow!

This was my birthday purchase last August, and it's one of the extremely rare times that I've bought a pre-cut BOM kit. Check out its gorgeous box! I'll certainly be re-using this when the project is all sewn up!

I hope you are having a good week!