This year, I am honored to be one of twelve Maywood Makers for Maywood Studio. Our maker group is periodically given assignments to create something using Maywood fabrics. One of our first assignments was to make a mini temperature quilt based on the temperatures where we live for the month of March 2024.
I had never made a temperature quilt before and only had a vague idea of what it even was. I did a bit of googling and all the ideas I saw got me pumped and eager to get started!
What is a temperature quilt?
A temperature quilt has a block for each day being tracked. Often, quilters track the temperatures for a whole year. Mine was just for March, so my quilt would have 31 blocks.
Fabrics are chosen to represent different temperature ranges. Maywood Studio assigned fabrics to temperature ranges in 5 degree increments. The fabrics were chosen from their Shadow Play line and ranged from deep teal and purples for the cooler temps to corals and reds for the warmer ones. I love this line because they work as solids, but the varying shades of color add a bit more interest.
Typically, each block in a temperature quilt will be made up of two colors. The high and low temperatures are tracked for each day, and each block is then made with one color to represent the high and one to represent the low.
My temperatures for Albuquerque ranged from 30℉ to 71℉, which gave me a color palette of purples, light pinks, and bright corals. I knew that I wanted my design to reflect the location of the climate. This lead me to the idea of incorporating the Zia sun symbol.
The Zia symbol is on the New Mexico state flag and is beloved by many who live here. The symbol is four groups of four lines extending from the top, bottom, right and left of a circle.
The symbol comes from the Native Americans of the Zia Pueblo. According to the Zia Pueblo website, "The symbol has a sacred meaning to the Zia [people]. Four is a sacred number that symbolizes the Circle of Life: four winds, four seasons, four directions, and four sacred obligations." The Zia symbol belongs to the Zia Pueblo, so I had to request formal permission and get approval to use it in this quilt.
I took the four groups of four lines and placed them around a classic sawtooth star. This is the focal point of the quilt and the rest was designed to flow well with it. I used straight line quilting to intentionally draw the viewer's eyes to the focal point. My hope is that this quilt expresses well my love for the place I live, while paying tribute and respect to the history and native people of the New Mexico area.
I was having too much fun with this quilt, so I didn't stop at the front. The back of the quilt is made from piecing together fabrics representing the highest and lowest temperatures in the quilt. The binding color represents the mean average temperature for the month, which was 49℉.
I didn't have very much fabric left of the average color, Faded Rose, and couldn't get my usual 2.5" wide binding. There was only enough for a 2" binding, so I went with it. I was a little nervous that it wouldn't be wide enough to create a proper binding, but I was pleasantly surprised! The narrower binding not only fit, but actually ended up being perfect for this quilt! Because it's a mini quilt, a wider binding would have been too overpowering for it. I actually would like to try a 2" binding on a larger quilt now!
Overall, I'm very pleased with how my mini temperature quilt turned out, in both design and color. The finished size is 18" x 24". It was a fun project to test out a new type of quilt. The best part is that this quilt and the quilts made by the other Maywood Makers are going to be on display at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show in July! I attended this fabulous show last summer, but won't be able to this year; so if you are there and see this quilt, please snap a pic and send it to me! 😊