Temp Quilt Wednesday?

Temp Quilt Tuesday has a better ring to it than Temp quilt Wednesday, but I missed Tuesday.  In this somewhat surreal state the world is in right now, I lost track of my days, but I'm overdue for a Temp Quilt update, so Wednesday will have to do!

Temperature Quit progress to March 14, 2020

With new pattern releases at the end of February, a last minute trunk show with the lovely Fort Dodge Area Quilters (thanks for inviting me!) and preparing and teaching a two-part ruler quilting class, the temperature quilt was rather neglected.  When I picked it up last weekend I had about 5 weeks of blocks to catch up on.  They are quick, simple blocks, but keeping the colours in the right places when catching up on 35 blocks at once required a bit more organisation to be efficient.

I borrowed some ideas from Raewyn to get organised.  I had precut strips of each colour and was cutting squares off the strips as needed. This worked fine when I was keeping up, but was bit tedious when I had 35 days' worth of catching up.  I decided to keep a supply of cut squares handy.  If I end up with extras of any color, I'll just have to come up with a little bonus project or add them to the scrap bin.  I am keeping the squares organised by temperature in little baggies, and clipping the bags together to keep them in order so that I can find each temperature's colour quickly.

Raewyn also writes the date and temperature range on the seam allowance of the block.  I adapted this to note the date and whether the square represents the maximum or minimum for that date, to help me sort things out easily if I get the squares jumbled up before sewing the pairs together.

I also tried to press towards the minimum temperature square.  This helped me keep track of top and bottom when I added the grey background pieces, without having to flip it over and check the marked seam allowance again.

I also too some time to cut out all the background pieces.  I had cut a bunch ahead, but I decided I might as well get them all ready, since I am definitely committed to this project now.  These pieces are also nicely sorted and stored.

I'll have to come up with a more environmentally friendly sorting solution that these plastic bags.  I promise I will at least reuse these again and again.

Once I had all this set it took me less than an hour to catch up, and I think now I can keep up more easily.  If I get behind again, I have a system that makes catching up easier, so I might avoid the cycle of falling further behind because catching up takes too long, which makes me leave it for later, when there will be even more to catch up on!

January and February rows are complete and sewn to each other.  I'm now only a few days behind for March.  I guess I'll go take care of that next!  I will say it's lovely to see the yellow and orange creeping into the quilt, so that's good incentive to go make a few blocks.

My Temperature Quilt pattern is still available free to download here.