Temperature Quilt 2021 & Dresden Plate Tutorial

I finally decided to do it. I am making a temperature quilt for the year 2021.

What is a temperature quilt? A temperature quilt can be a current or past documentation of the weather for a certain period of time. Some choose to begin January 1 of the current year, while others pick a special year from the past to record such as a birth of a child or anniversary.

No Some individuals document just the average temperature. Some people record the highs and lows. Some even record both the high and low as well as the type of weather they had that day.

I have seen temperature quilts and crochet blankets floating around the Pinterest world for many years but never thought much about making one.

But finally, with my new stay at home mom status and a plethora of older needing to be used fabrics that just happen to coordinate well, I am making a temperature quilt for this year, 2021. I am using Twiddletails printouts from their Facebook page/blog to document my temperature journey.

There are probably hundreds of patterns for a temperature quilt. Really the possibilities are endless. You can see a wide range of temperature quilt ideas here.

I have chosen the route of making a Dresden plate temperature quilt. I made my first Dresden plate while participating in the Moda Stitch Pink QAL in October 2020 and I really fell in love with the process as well as the end results.

For my temperature quilt I am doing the high and low each day. I find my temperatures daily here.

Tutorial for Dresden Plate Temperature Quilt

To make a Dresden plate work as a monthly temperature recorder you need to make sure you have a 22.5 degree template. You can purchase one like mine on Amazon or from your local quilt shop.

The 22.5 degree tempalte gives you a total of 16 blades. You may be thinking, how can I do a whole month with just 16 blades? The trick is that each blade is actually 2 days! Making each blade 2 days gives you 32 in total.

During a 31 day month you will be left with one half spacer day. A 30 day month you will have a whole blade spacer day and during February–at least for 2021) your will have a whole blade and one spacer day. See the photo below. The half grey blade is my spacer day for January.

How to make the Dresden Plate

My Dresden plate blades will measure 6.5″ long making my whole plate be approximately 13″ in diameter. Depending on what size plate you want you will need to change your measurements.

For One Blade:

• 2 – 2″ x 3.5″ rectangles–Your high temps
• 2 – 2″ x 3.5″ rectangles–Your low temps

After each blade is created you can begin to sew the blades together. If you look closely to the image below you can see that 2 of my days the temperatures didn’t leave the same range. To avoid this, many people make their temperature ranges very small or designate 2 fabrics for that temperature range (one fabric for if that temperature is the high and another fabric if that temperature is the low). I made my ranges in 5 degree intervals which means I have some solid half blades.

Check back for updates each month. I plan on embroidering the name of the month in the spacer and highlighting special days like birthdays, anniversaries and trips–like our trip to Florida in July (I may even use Florida’s temps that week instead of our own city’s since that is where we will be).

EDIT FEBRUARY 1, 2021: I am still doing a temperature quilt for 2021. However, I am no longer doing this particular Dresden plate design so there will no longer be any updates here. See my current temperature quilt here.

Check out how to Square Up a Dresden!

Happy Sewing!

Starting to bloom by choosing JOY ~ Julia