You may remember that a few months ago I published a post about the 2020 temperature quilt I was planning. I originally sketched the plan for that quilt while watching one of the debates before the lockdown started (that seems so long ago). Not long after that, the pandemic shutdown happened and all non-essential businesses were ordered to close, leaving me unable to get the fabric for this project.

Related post: Planning 2020 Temperature Quilt

A few weeks ago I was finally able to make it out to my local Joann’s to buy the fabric for this project, and in today’s post, I’m going to share the color scheme I’m using and how I organized + prepared my fabric for this project.

Tracking Temperatures

Using data from the National Weather Service, starting on the first of January I recorded the highest and lowest temperatures of each day and formatted it into an Excel Spreadsheet. I also made note of any days it snowed with an asterisk. So far we’ve only had snow once this year, but we might get more in December.

As you can see from the above spreadsheet, Memphis has some crazy, almost bipolar temperatures, even in the winter. It’s not uncommon for there to be a 20-30 degree difference between the high and low temperatures on any given day so I needed a wide range of fabric colors since you can’t really predict what temperature it will be.

Fabric + Color Scheme

I knew pretty early on that I wanted to go with a classic rainbow color scheme. I feel like the rainbow colors are a much more associative visual representation than other color schemes.

I was initially going to coordinate the colors myself and buy quilting cotton off the bolt in 2.5 inch increments, but I changed my plans after one of my followers on Instagram pointed me in the direction of jellyrolls: rolls of coordinated cotton fabric strips already cut + pinked to the width I needed.

Fortunately, the selection of jellyrolls at my local Joann’s had not been affected by the sudden run on quilting fabric and there were many different roll options to choose from.

The roll I settled on is Kona’s Bright Rainbow Fabric Roll.

This half roll contains twenty-four 2.5″x44″ strips of quilting cotton fabric in 12 coordinated solid colors. I don’t really anticipate needing any more fabric than this for the quilt top. Certain colors will also be used more frequently than others.

With all of its pretty swirling colors I almost didn’t want to unroll it! (I have the same problem with hanks of yarn as well, is that normal or is it just me?)

After I unrolled the strips and took pictures, I started matching the fabric colors up with my chosen temperature ranges. To help me keep track of which temperature corresponds to each color, I wrote down the temperature range of each color on a piece of masking tape and then stuck it to it’s respective strip of fabric.

Temperature ranges:

• 0-9 F
• 10-19 F
• 20-29 F
• 30-39 F
• 40-49 F
• 50-59 F
• 60-69 F
• 70-79 F
• 80-89 F
• 90-99 F
• 100+ F

I chose to not use the darkest purple, because I couldn’t find a temperature range for it. I’ll find another use for it, maybe as a filler color for the months that have less than 31 days. If you have any other ideas for how I could use these two strips of fabric, please let me know in the comments!

In an upcoming post, I will talk more about the construction and assembly of the quilt blocks.

Let me know in the comments if you are working on any temperature related project this year!

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