UFOs Again

This week's Wednesday UFO report:

My Vintage-Inspired English Paper Piecing has finally seen some progress!

That left and top border have gotten another row of diamonds since last week. (See the "before/during" pic below.)

  

The current cream-and-white border is almost complete. It needs one more neutral row (almost 100 diamonds), and then a colorful row. I'm not sure what's next after that.

I'm working on my (elaborate) quilt back for my weather quilt. I've got about 130 of these (8-inch) triangle blocks made, which is plenty.

Lots of progress on this, and lots of scraps being incorporated! 

(This process has, of course, resulted in a bunch more colorful stuff partially assembled, which will become part of another project.)

I'm linking my UFO report to this week's link party at Jo's Country Junction.

UFO Challenge report for the week

What I've been working on this week:

The temperature quilt has every day of 2017 represented by color.

The side borders (little black squares) got added as each row was stitched. Now, it's got a border of black squares on the top and bottom, too. Here's the side ...

This weather quilt project was great for using a lot of scraps. But still, I was a little disappointed at how many precut pieces I had left over (not to mention scraps in general!) So, I planned a use for the precut pieces - and some additional scraps as well.

Triangle stripes!
I've been wanting to make a quilt of triangle stripes with neutral background triangles ... And I didn't have a quilt-back planned for the weather quilt yet. So, this is going to be the (elaborate) quilt back!

I stitched weather-quilt leftover strips together, then cut triangles, and matching white triangles. 

I even devised a plan for the additional scraps that were leftover from trimming the patchwork down to size. More on that another day.

So, this is progress on scrap-using, and progress on a project I hope to finish soon!

I'm linking this post to this week's UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction, and looking forward to seeing what progress others are making on quilt-y UFOs this week.

Weather Quilt: Week 51 of 52

This quilt top is almost done!

More pictures later ... when the weather is more suited to an outdoor picture!

This has been a fun project this year. I'm hoping to work on backing and quilting early in the new year.

The Summer Weather is in the Quilt!

The Weather Quilt is still happening!

I recently updated the quilt-in-progress, and it's been a while since I showed any pictures!

Full disclosure: It's been a while since I sewed any weeks-of-weather onto the quilt either ... the little labeled/pinned stacks below each represent a week! 

I try to update a week or two at a time, but somehow, it had been 8 weeks since I did anything! But playing with cute fabrics (closeups below) is always fun!

I've been surprised and amused that I haven't gotten to use any of my bright red fabrics in my quilt. I had them planned for the 100°+ days - of which there are usually several during the summer around here. (Last year, there were 17 days that the weather service recorded temps above 100°. This year: none!)

So, the quilt is coming along. It's getting big. Queen-sized when it's through ... and the quilt top is nearly 75% done!

So, now, I shall have to plan how to do the back of the quilt ... I want to make a little "key" with which colors represent which temperature ranges. And since I've got a variety of fabrics in each color,  (and plenty of leftovers, as always!) I might do some cute "string blocks" to incorporate some of the extra fabric.

And, speaking of leftovers, I've got lots of ideas in my head for using up the scraps that I'd set aside for this project ... I'll have plenty of extras, so those pieces I cut will be a great jumping-off point for whatever quilts I start next year.

I just need to plan some quilting time into my January, so that I actually get this quilted while it's still winter!!!

Another week of weather!

I've added another week to the temperature quilt!

Lots of 80° high temps (yellow), and 90° high temps (orange).

Weather, 25 weeks in ...

This weather quilt has been lots of fun so far.

Each horizontal row represents a week, and the color of each segment is determined by that day's high temperature.

This is 25 weeks of weather, quilt-style, out of the 52+ weeks in a year. 

So far, it's been fun to watch the weather "trends" as illustrated in fabric. Lots of teal and blue and green early in the year; lots of yellow and orange now.

Since a variety of fabric is fun, and since I have (and occasionally purchase) lots of random bits of fabric, it made the most sense to use a color range (rather than one specific fabric print or solid) to represent each temperature range. 

I've cut a bunch of fun reds ... for the 100°+ days that are sure to come in July and August. That kind of weather is not my favorite, but I am looking forward to the interest it will add to the middle of my temperature quilt!

My original calculations had this quilt ending up longer than it is wide. But from the looks of this part of the quilt (almost half a year), it's looking like it'll be about 90" square when it's done. Not a bad size. But I may add some tall borders to the top and bottom (maybe a black piano key border?) to give it another 10 or 12 inches of length. We shall see ...

Weather Quilt ... 19 weeks down!

It's been a few weeks since I've posted about my weather quilt, so here's a quick picture update.

This past week was a landmark week for the quilt: the first orange fabrics (90° days)!

The quilt top is getting bigger, so it's getting harder to take a quick photo of the whole thing at once ... So here are 2 pictures: 

left side ... 

and right side ...

Already, it's fun to see a bit of the seasonal change in temperature ... Lots of highs in the 80°s (yellow) lately, compared to almost none early in the year. 

I'm collecting my red scraps for the many inevitable 100°+ days coming up this summer!!

Weather: a month in quilt

The weather quilt is coming along! One of the nice things about this project is that it's easy to catch up if I get behind!

I've been keeping a daily high-temperature list, and translating that into fabrics, usually a week at a time. (See my previous posts here, here, and here about this quilt.)

Here are the first 5 weeks of the year, temp-quilt style. (The rows are supposed to be horizontal, but the photo came out better this way.)

Here's the basic rundown - each day's color is based on that day's high temperature:

30°s: Purples
40°s: Navy Blues
50°s: Blues
60°s: Turquoises
70°s: Greens
80°s: Yellows
90°s: Oranges
100°s: Reds

Using a basic color for each high-temperature range lets me use a variety of fabrics (scraps!) that I already have (yay!) AND has the advantage of making this look "scrappy" and "quilt-y", which is just what I want.

Here's the quilt all scrunched up for a close(er) look.

Weather Quilt, Week 2

Here's week 2 of the weather/temperature quilt ... (See last week's post for week 1, and the intro post for my inspiration.)

Again, the quilt is going to be kind of huge ... Actually-Queen-size (instead of kind-of-Queen-size, which is my usual), so that's good.

To help me stay on track, I made a chart that I can fill in and color-code. (This should help me avoid accidentally stitching rows upside-down!?)

In case anybody else ever wants to try a similar quilt design, and needs a chart, here's a link to a (.pdf) download of the chart I designed. It's probably not exactly to scale, but it's close(ish). And it's printable, and free. And it fits on a page. 0

I'm liking that this will be a big quilt top, easily made during just a few minutes each week, in some pretty fabrics that are way better in-a-quilt than on-my-shelf!

Below is another (maybe clickable?) link to the chart. (If you try the links, leave a comment and let me know if/how they work; I'm new at the embedded-pdf thing ... Thanks!)

Week 1, Temperature Quilt Style

The first week of the New Year, in color!

(See my first post about the Temperature Quilt ...)

So far, so good.
I'm still debating about whether it was a good idea to make it 80-something inches wide ... mostly, I think it's a good idea ... Just a little difficult to photograph!

Welcome, 2017

There are so many great things about a new year! While I try not to set unrealistic goals, I do appreciate the feeling of a fresh start!

In my never-ending quest to use up more fabric, I have a fun project I'm going to try this year: a Temperature Quilt!

Inspired by this lady's temperature afghan, my mom decided to start a temperature afghan for 2017, in crochet. She suggested I try something similar, and I was intrigued. Since I'm not likely to crochet a whole row of an afghan daily right now, I decided to design a temperature quilt.

My quilt design involves a horizontal quilt row for every week, made of 7 "bricks" (which can be precut and handy in a variety of colors). If I keep track of the daily high temperatures (or look them up online after the fact!), I can put together a week's temperature bricks pretty quickly.

Here's my color/temperature scale:

100s - Reds
Upper 90s - Dark Oranges
   Lower 90s - Oranges
Upper 80s - Golden Yellows
   Lower 80s - Light Yellows
Upper 70s - Darker Greens
   Lower 70s - Lighter Greens
Upper 60s - Turquoises
   Lower 60s - Teals
Upper 50s - Lighter Blues
   Lower 50s - Medium Blues
Upper 40s - Dark Blues
   Lower 40s - Deep Navy Blues
Upper 30s - Light Purples
   Lower 30s - Dark Purples


Here are some of my initial fabric choices, although I've since decided to take out the pink and brown and add in more blues and purples:

My color scale gives me some freedom to make the quilt scrappy, pretty, and use a variety of fabrics, so that I can mostly use what I have. I figure, even if the high temp today is the same as tomorrow, I can use a similar-color-but-different-print, just to keep it interesting.

My design looks like this:

I spent some time looking at temperature quilt designs, and found most of them uninspiring. So I figured out my own layout. Long skinny rows for each week help to organize the randomness. Offsetting the rows and adding a border make it look neat. I'll probably do black prints (or black-and-white) fabrics for the borders, which should set off the colors pretty nicely.

I'm precutting a bunch of colors today ... bricks cut at 2¼" x 12½", and little black squares for the offset-border-edges cut at 2¼" x 2¼". The idea is to end up with a queen-size quilt (80-something inches by 90-something, maybe?).

I've started a daily-high-temperature list, and I might even fill in or color in my graph paper design as I go.

So, I'll try and include some pictures and updates as I make some progress!