"Emoture" Temperature quilt

Had a longing to do something fabricy to mark my fiftieth year!

 Inspired by watching a friend make her "Temperature Quilt" (thank you Kathy Strawson) several years ago,  worked on ideas with Kim Caskey, another quilty friend, New Year's Eve 2018, as we both had big birthdays coming up and wanted to commemorate the event.

A temperature quilt, for those that don't know, is a quilted representation of the daily high and low temperatures and is usually made over a year, that is the air temperature, not body !!

But I wanted more that just to record temperatures, I wanted feelings and emotions, hence the name "Emoture", smash up of emotion and temperature.

First things first, I found the perfect notebook and pen to do the daily recording. First thing in the morning and last thing at night I recorded the temperature and how I was feeling. I checked the high and low for the day in the morning, recorded it and readjusted at night if there were any changes.

A teeny fabric covered notebook and skull pen, present from Mark Larkin.

Then I spent time looking for fabrics and choosing colours. I wanted a rainbow and ended up choosing fabrics from two Moda fabric lines, Grunge Basics by Basic Grey and Spotted fabrics by Zen Chic. My concern was that I needed a collection with a good variety of colour and I needed a popular collection in case I had to order more.

I started with a half yard of  all the colours I'd picked and added a few more along the way!

Fabric selection


Fabrics sorted, next up was the design. Size was first on the agenda, I wanted this for my bed,  so it was gonna be a big one. I wanted one square for each day of my fiftieth year including my fifty first birthday. Each month was going to be placed vertically, thirteen rows with thirty four squares in each row including fillers, a total of 442 squares according to the calculator!

     

1. Temperatures foundation paper pieced 2. emotion circles added 3. first row developing!

I worked out a document that contained all the colours with associated temperatures and emotions and printed it out to have as a guide as I made up the blocks. Every degree from 5- to 32 was assigned a colour. The emotions took a wee bit longer to decide on but eventually by the start of April I was raring to go.

Designed my foundation block in EQ7 (Electric Quilt 7), prepared magic papers for printing and photocopied a load of foundation patterns. My circles were going to be hand appliquéd onto the blocks.

Blocks pinned together in order

So here's the breakdown: large diamond represents the high temperature of the day the four surrounding triangles the daily low, the small circle how I felt in the morning and the large circle how I felt before I went to bed.

And here's how it grew over the months:

 Tada! This photo was taken yesterday the 17th of April, two day after the last recording and about ten minutes after the piecing was finished. My two kids are standing on chairs and holding it at arms length, photo not very good, 'twas a bit windy but I so wanted to see it all together for the first time.

Quilting will have to wait a couple of weeks but I know what I'm doing, I think!

Feels weird, I miss the recording.

I found it so hard the first couple of weeks to pin down emotions, or put a name on the overall feeling . I would spend ages trying to decide and getting frustrated. It required time and patience to work on this and now I miss it terribly. Tempted to keep on recording until I get inspired with another design!

Wasn't very happy with how the colours were turning out for the first few months, thought about changing the colour selection but was way toooo lazy and decided to go with the flow, I had no influence over the temperatures, I just needed to channel my inner Elisa and Let It Go!! 

Very happy with result now and looking forward to the quilting.

Started on my "RONA" quilt last week, a block or each day in Lockdown. 

Here's a peek at the first block:

Stay safe and be kind to yourself and others x