A Temperature Quilt in Scotland
When I first read that the Quiltcon committee were planning a special exhibition of temperature quilts in 2022, I actually wasn’t sure what one was, but after some fun googling I knew I had to try my hand at one. Have a look for yourselves and you will find a whole raft of beautiful quilts representing the weather for set periods of time from all over the world, in all sorts of styles and forms. The method of representing the temperature can be in any form whatsoever so the scope is endless and the results are really stunning. Living in a temperate maritime climate in the UK ( 56 °N 4°W ) I knew I wouldn’t get the extreme changes in temperature you might find in some other parts of the globe, but this artform that represents factual events really appealed to me on so many levels so I was in for the journey. At the time I couldn’t have imagined that 2020 was going to be such a weird weird year- not a year we are likely to forget now so why not a have quilt based on it whilst we are at it.
Immediately I embarked on the project I knew that I had to use Oakshott fabrics for this piece of work. Not only are they some of my favourite fabrics to use for their softness of texture, but the vast array and richness of colours would be able to take me right through the year with the increments I was hoping for. My biggest issue was how to set the parameters for my range of colours, as both our winters and summers (or lack of… ) can be a bit unpredictable. First off I thought I’d chose colours that went from the coldest ever recorded here to the hottest, but that meant a range to 59° C (108 °F) and as I was planning on a colour for every degree C I knew straight away this wouldn’t work. What was the likelihood of record temperatures I thought? Slim please – surely? Eventually I settled on a range from -5 to 26 °C (23 -90 °F) and if we end up outside of that the I will have to do a bit of panic colour picking I reckon. That being said, we have had some weird old weather in the past 10 years so anything could have happened but here we are in July and so far, my plan is coming together. To be honest I did cheat a bit as I didn’t start planning this quilt until lockdown and normally we find our coldest snaps come in February and this year that minimum has been just -5° C so I am hoping I’m safe.
Oakshott fabrics in all their glorious green tones
My next step was to call on the great and knowledgeable team at Oakshott for some help in picking my colours and I cannot thank them enough for their advice and the help they gave me. I found choosing my graduations of colour quite daunting using the laptop screen but after some chats and with the help of the downloadable colour chart, I passed many an hour shuffling little squares of paper and hatched my plan.
I’ve just realised I haven’t mentioned the design itself, yet have I? Well forgive the rough sketch but here is my plan. Little houses with each one representing a day, with the roof being the low for that day and the building the maximum. By adding the black door, the colours will each pop even more I hope and the final twist was to rotate the houses, hoping that the resulting doors shapes would give a new dimension without if being too obviously “ housey”. So now I had the full plan - all I needed to do was sit back and gather in my data and then sew. Pretty simple really…
Us Brits are obsessed with the weather any way so it’s probably no surprise collecting the data has become a new favourite mini pastime and I have found myself boring my poor other half with random comments, like “ did you know that’s 14 days this month that I will need to use “Greenshoot “ or “ oh no, we can’t have another cool day, I’ve run out of Porticello “ - Oakshott have the most fabulous names for their colours by the way if you aren’t familiar.
Sewing didn’t start until July as I had to clear the decks of other obligations but at least that meant I had half my data all ready to go. I did hit snag with deciding the final layout of the rows as I could not stick with months otherwise the size would have been very odd but I’ve settled on a mix of 20 and 21 days per row and so it’s not going to be obvious where one month end and the next starts and I like that. Hopefully it will just blend into one mass of colours.
These first few pictures, taken on a windy day in the garden, show the months of January and early February and already I’m intrigued at the pattern that’s emerging. We clearly have that cyclical thing going, where we get 4 or 5 days and then a change in the weather and I’m itching to see how this pans out as the quilt grows. My plan is to post an update once a month from now on, as we progress though the second half of the year and the rows all come together, so I do hope you come back and follow the progress as we get some oranges into this quilt and acknowledge what purports to be the Scottish summer.
too windy a day i think ?
