Prepping for 2023

 It's been a good week of finishing 2022 projects up.

This is the quilt I finished last week, but couldn't show until it was gifted. It should be on the recipients bed by now. 

I've also finished all the Christmas pajamas, be it pants or nightgowns. 

I've got clue 4 done for Chilhowie Mystery quilt too. Here's a couple of the units, but they are all finished.

I also played with the cutoff triangles from clue two, and I made three of these blocks.

This block looks big in the photo, but it's 7" unfinished. I think I'm going to frame with teal to make it a little bit bigger, then make the three blocks into potholders. I don't usually save cutoffs this small, but there were so many of them, I just couldn't throw them away. 

I got my Christmas present from DD#2 and DSIL already, and it was exactly what I wanted, and I couldn't be more excited about it! I've done several mystery quilts, but they gave me a subscription to the Murder Mystery Quilt For 2023 it's a Viking themed mystery, and every month  they send you a chapter or two of the mystery story, along with the directions to a quilt block. As the quilt comes together, the designs give you clues to help you solve the mystery! I started pulling some fabrics for that mystery, but I'm not sold on what I pulled, so I may just wait and pull fabrics as the blocks are made. 

Have you ever heard of a Temperature Quilt? I started hearing about them in 2019 or so, and it sounded fun, but I was swamped with wedding quilts at the time, so I put the idea aside. I already have a lot to do for 2023, but I do have a bit of extra time right now, and I knew if I get get the prepwork done now, I could probably make a Temperature Quilt in 2023.

If you google Temperature Quilt, you'll get a lot of different hits and different ideas of how to do one. Most temperature quilts I've seen follow the highs and lows of each day during the year. Some only use the average temperature for the day. Some people add a lot of detail, and add markers for record temps, or track precipitation too. How many colors of fabric you use, and what your temperature spread is varies widely too, and a lot of that is determined by where you live. 

I pulled a rainbow of colors from stash. I've since eliminated one of the greens because I realized cut small they would look too similar. I still have 22 fabrics in play. I needed to figure out what unit I wanted to make, and how I wanted to divide the temperatures in Tucson, Arizona so it would work with 22 representative fabrics. To help me out, I checked out the record highs and lows over the last few years.

Tucson, Arizona record temps in Fahrenheit degrees

2017- high- 116   low- 28

2018- high- 112   low- 26

2019- high- 110   low- 27

2020- high- 113   low- 24

2021- high- 115   low- 30

2022- high- 111   low to date- 26

Tucson's highest temperature ever recorded was 117 degrees in 1990, and the lowest ever recorded was 6 degrees in 1913. We had an outdoor pipe rupture in 2011 when it hit 13 degrees at our house, which is a bit cooler than the airport and the official temperatures. 

Since water freezes at 32 degrees, and we don't usually get much colder than that, my first category (dark purple) is 32 degrees and below. Other places I've lived would need many more cold categories, but for Tucson, I think it will suffice. If we have any crazy single digits in 2023, I may just add another fabric. 

Once I decided the lowest category, I needed to figure out how many degrees each color should represent to get close to our high temps with the remaining 21 fabrics. I chose 4 degree increments. 

Since I really hate hot weather, you better believe I'm hoping to not need the darkest red fabric, 113+. 

As far as what unit you can use for temperature quilts the sky is the limit. Since I know 2023 will be a busy year, I wanted to keep things simple. I am going to make flying geese units, one per day. The main goose will be the high temp of the day, the corners will be the low temp. If it's sunny per usual, the flying geese will point up, if we get rain, it will point down. If we get snow, which does happen occasionally, it will point down and I think I'll applique a tiny snowflake on the goose. Each month will be a column of the quilt. 

I've already cut my fabrics into 2.5" strips. I know I cut way too many strips, but they are jelly rolls sized, so using the extras will not be hard. I don't know how many of each strip I will need, so cutting too many seemed wiser. I didn't want to use one of the fabrics for something else, then not have enough. 

I've got my mini companion angle and mini easy angle packed up with the strips and the color key, so that 2023 project is ready to go. I don't think making one flying geese unit per day will be that hard, and by going simple, it should be easy to catch up if I get sidetracked. 

If I like doing that, maybe in 2024 I'll try the Itty Bitty House challenge, where you mkae a tiny house block every day, or even combine the two, high temp for the roof, low temp for the house....hmmmmm....we'll see!