Temperature Quilt - Calculating Fabric Quantities

 Calculating the amount of fabric needed to make a temperature quilt is very hard.

It depends on the size & design of your quilt and blocks.

The easiest way is to buy a fabric bundle, but you will definitely have some fabrics that get very little use. In my experience no quilter has ever complained about having too much fabric though.

You will therefore just have to determine how much you need of the color/s you will be using the most.

Because I'm making an applique quilt again this year, albeit raw edge not needle turn, I'm hoping to do a little homework before I start.  This way, hopefully, the block making process will be a little shorter.

Historical data is very helpful here. See this post about how to get hold of historical data.

I requested just the 2020 data for my purposes. In order to determine how many days fell in each of my temperature ranges, I first sorted by minimum temperature and counted those, then sorted by maximum temperature and counted those.

Here's what I found:

I had 55 occurrences of the the 66 to 70 degree range which means this is the color I will need the most of.

If you know how much fabric each block requires, you can do the math from there.

My plan is to pre-cut a bunch of background squares and maybe even make a couple of blocks ahead of time.

I also used the data to see how many occurrences of specific temperature combinations there were.  Now I know I can pre-make at least 5 of quite a few. (The pictures are a little fuzzy, so hopefully you get the idea.)

If you're on Facebook be sure to join the Twiddletails Temperature Quilt Along group where a whole lot of sharing and advice can be found.  It's grown into such a fun group in the last year.