My first month of recording daily temperatures is complete — 31 unique days stitched together in my Temperature Quilt. As small as each of these squares are, each has a story, a moment captured in color, reflecting the changing weather of January. I call this picture "My January in My Hand," a tangible reminder of the first steps in this year-long creative journey. Holding it, I can already feel the excitement of the months to come and the patterns that will unfold as the seasons change.

This year I decided to start a personal project that I could do every day just for a few minutes at a time. I learned about temperature quilts last year when I attended QuiltCon in Raleigh, NC. I thought it was such a great idea because it is a project that can be achieved little by little and by the end of it all you can have a big project done. What I also liked is the fact that there is a recording of the daily temperatures plus I could add a recording of my daily mood! I am a big fan of recording things…like dates, my sewing projects. I write journals because I love to save moments of my life, my family and friends so this type of quilt really caught my attention and here I am at the end of January and I have done my very first 31 days of daily recording of the temperature and my mood using fabric! What is not to love about this type of quilt! I am in!

What is a Temperature Quilt?

It is a project that takes a whole year because it records through fabric the daily temperatures of the day. The way it is done (design) is up to the maker. People decide what type of design to do, or what colors to choose, if doing the stitching by hand or machine or both. Any type of fabrics can be used. But what it is the same is that every day the temperature is recorded using pieces of fabrics that have been assigned a temperature with a color. That means every day at the end of the day I open the weather app and see what the temperature was for the low and the high. I then go pick up my fabrics that are assigned to each of the different temperatures and in about 5 minutes I have a tiny little square done and every day I will repeat this for the whole year! And at the end I will put together a quilt with all of my months. Each month will be a strip made out of all the 2” squares. At the end of the year I will have 12 strips, one for each month of the year and each strip with 30-31 squares (28 for February) representing each day of the month. I think it would be a fun quilt! Sashing and borders will be added for sure.

This is what I did first: Pick colors for the different temperatures.

Colors = Temperatures

I chose different colors to use for each of the different levels of temperatures. I personally divided the temperatures in increments of 10s. Except for the lowest temperatures I did 0-9 after that goes 10s, 20s, 30s…etc all the way to the 90s

To each of these temperature groups I assigned a color. My colors go from white color for the lowest temperatures 0-9 to red for the 90s. I am working with Fahrenheit degrees.

See my colors and fabrics below and next to them the temperatures in increments of 10s. These are in Fahrenheit.

Design:

When I was first thinking to start this project I thought I was going to create petals for each of the days and at the end of the month I will have a flower design…I tried this route but decided that it was going to take more time so I switched to make just squares and slice the square in half diagonally and insert another piece of fabric in between. I am using improvisation cutting when I slice the square in the middle and the strip for the middle. For cutting the square I use a ruler, cutting the square at around 2.25”. After the square has the strip in the middle then I square it off to be 2” all around. But this might change for the next months…I also want to experiment with the design…but always working with a square and the line in the middle. There are no rules in the design for this quilt, which is nice, and I am not seeking perfection…I am just playing and feeling the freedom of creating a piece.

Recording Lows and high temperatures:

When I was researching this type of project I read that people record the high and low temperatures or sometimes just pick one of the temperatures, ex: use just the low or just the high temperature.

I wanted to keep a record of both. That is when I thought that using a square sliced in the middle would give me a chance to use both temperatures. The square represents the low temperature of the day and the fabric added in the middle represents the high temperature of the day.

Low temperature in blue and high temperature in pink. That day the temperature was in the 30’s for the low and the 50’s for the high.

Recording My Mood:

Thin strip = not as happy

Wide strip= happy

The thinner the strip…the less of a good day I had. The wider the strip….the most happiest I was.

For recording my mood each day I decided to use the width of the strip of fabric that goes through the middle of the square as a way to represent my mood. If the strip is very thin then my day was not a great one, if the strip is wide then my day was a good one. If a strip goes from thin to wide means that my day started not as good but ended nice or if the strip goes from wide to thin it means I went from happy to sad… Somehow recording my mood at the end of the day makes me feel better!

Recording my trips:

This idea happened while I went to Chicago a few weeks back. I decided to take pieces of fabrics to keep working in my temperature quilt while visiting my friend in Chicago. I am not sure if I was supposed to keep recording the temperature from my town but I thought I personally would like to record the temperatures of the place where I am at the moment. So I recorded the temperatures of Chicago. This also gave me the idea that I could record my travels! Because when I travel the fabric squares will be done by hand and in that way when I look back in my quilt I will always know when I was traveling! And also there will be stories forming around those days I travel. For example already from my trip to Chicago I have the story of having to color one of the fabric squares using colored pencils because the temperatures in Chicago warmed up one day and I only had brought white squares already cut out, thinking that the temperatures were going to be below 10…well I was wrong…so my friend suggested the great idea of coloring my white square with a light blue pencil to match the blue I was using for the 20s temperatures. And now when I look back at that square I remember that story, my friend and the moment. To me that makes this quilt more special!

And today (February 2nd) I am in Raleigh, NC ... .yesterday the temperature for the high was in the 60s! Guess what? I did not bring my fabrics for the 60 degrees temperature ... .ah! So now I am thinking of embroidering by hand the color I am using for that temperature. I had to ask my husband to go look in my sewing room and send me a picture of the color for that temperature. I have all the colors organized in bags in a drawer.

I think the embroidery in the squares just add more character to my piece.

But now when I would look back at the month of February and see that square with the embroidery I will remember that I was in Raleigh and that the temperatures were higher and that I forgot to bring all of my fabrics… From now on when I travel I will bring all the different temperature fabrics with me…just in case!

New Idea: Recording Birthdays!

Since my temperature quilt is a year-long project, each day bringing a new square, I recently had an idea that made it even more meaningful. After celebrating one of my best friend’s birthdays in town last night, I sat down to sew my daily square and thought — why not record the birthdays of special people in my life right in the quilt? Yes, of course! So I’ve started adding simple hand-embroidered stitches to mark these joyful days: pink for girls and blue for boys. I went back to my January squares to stitch in the birthdays of my sister, my husband, and two other wonderful friends. Now I wonder — what other beautiful moments might be worth capturing in my quilt? I have a whole year to find out!!

The blue stitching for recording the birthday can’t be seen too well so I might change the tone from blue to like orange!
Please comment below if you have any questions! If you would like to start a temperature quilt with me following this design please join in! Each quilt will be unique even if using the same design, because the colors will be chosen by each maker and the temperatures will be different from place to place.

Since February I am recording birthdays with the initial of the birthday person. But I won’t change the way I did it on January so I can be true to the evolving ideas of my project, it is all part of the discovering while working in this quilt!

A lot has happened to my temperature quilt since I last came to write in my blog. Good things have happened! Good things in terms of discovering slowly, day by day during working in my temperature quilt things that I am enjoying adding to it. I believe my project is turning also into a journaling quilt!

March is underway and so far each square has embroidery stitches of special moments or items that are significant of my day. Like when I talked to a friend on the phone I embroidered a little phone! Or when the day was so sunny I embroidered a sun. Bad times too like when I got sick and then my twins got sick at the same time I embroidered two potted plants that were wilted, when they recovered the plants sprung back to live! And everyday there is something to embroider, adding an extra layer of story to my quilt! I feel that it is getting more special to me and I am connecting to it in a more meaningful way. I am recording my live not just the temperatures!

When I went to Phoenix for QuiltCon I embroidered a little cactus and the letters QC

When I returned home I added a tiny airplane and home!

Another thing that has changed is that now I am recording birthdays with the initials of whose birthday’s it is! I like this much more than just embroidering a line.

I feel like without intention my quilt is evolving every day, every month!

My Temperature Quilt 2025

How I became part of the Over the Mountain Studio Tour