Almanac Quilt

A local area quilt guild, Capital Area Modern Quilt Guild, started a small group to inspire and motivate members to create a Temperature Quilt. A Temperature Quilt is a visual display of the high and/or low temperatures for a particular period of time. Fabrics/fabric colors are asssigned to a set temperature or range of temperatures. Those fabrics are then used to construct the quilt. One of the benefits of making a temperature quilt is that it takes the guesswork out of deciding what fabrics to put where. The daily temperature becomes a variable that controls the fabric placement. Often times you might find yourself saying I would never put thost two pieces of fabric together. Once you have enough days or weeks together you can visually see the different seasons.

The Almanac Quilt came about while trying to think of something that had not been done before. 52 weeks of something seemed easier than 365 days. I started thinking about what shapes could be broken down into seven pieces (one for each day of the week). An umbrella with its panels came to mind. After drafting a umbrella with seven panels I decided to show the low temperatures by having it look like they underside of the umbrella was showing. This gave the umbrella more dimension and really showed the differences in the daily temperature range. To make it more of a complete picture of the week/year I added raindrops to the block. One raindrop for every day that it rained. If it rained more than an inch of rain then a puddle was added to that week's block. I didn't want the umbrellas to just sit there all in the same direction so the concept of wind was introduced. The angle of the umbrella correlates to the average weekly wind speed. The background quilting was also intended to evoke a windy feeling to make it seem like the umbrella's were getting tossed about.

For More details visit Debra Lohman's quilting website - www.debralohman.com

	The Almanac Quilt came about while trying to think of something that had not been done before. 52 weeks of something seemed easier than 365 days. I started thinking about what shapes could be broken down into seven pieces (one for each day of the week). An umbrella with its panels came to mind. After drafting a umbrella with seven panels I decided to show the low temperatures by having it look like they underside of the umbrella was showing. This gave the umbrella more dimension and really showed the differences in the daily temperature range. To make it more of a complete picture of the week/year I added raindrops to the block. One raindrop for every day that it rained. If it rained more than an inch of rain then a puddle was added to that week's block. I didn't want the umbrellas to just sit there all in the same direction so the concept of wind was introduced. The angle of the umbrella correlates to the average weekly wind speed. The background quilting was also intended to evoke a windy feeling to make it seem like the umbrella's were getting tossed about.
For More details visit Debra Lohman's quilting website - www.debralohman.com