Temperature Quilt
A temperature quilt swaps yarn for fabric. Each day becomes one block, cut from the fabric that matches its temperature range, and the 365 blocks sew into a calendar of the year.
1. City and year
285 US cities. Each one uses the nearest NOAA weather station that reports every day.
2. Temperature ranges and colors
Each band includes its lower number and stops just below its upper number. Free: up to 8 bands.
3. Style
4. Craft and gauge
Yards per stitch depends on yarn weight and stitch. The defaults are typical for worsted yarn; measure a swatch and edit them.
Pick a city to see its year
Your blanket appears here as soon as the weather loads: one colored row for every day, with the number of days and yards for each color.
Colors, days and yarn
| Color | Range °F | Days | Rows | Yards | Skeins | Match to your yarn |
|---|
Daily table: date, temperature, color
| Date | High °F | Color | Data |
|---|
How a temperature quilt goes together
Pick a block size, a 4-inch finished square is popular, and a fabric for each temperature band. Cut one square per day. Sew them in rows of seven, one row per week, and the quilt reads like a calendar. A full year is 365 blocks, 53 rows of seven with the last row part full, so a 4-inch block makes a top about 28 by 212 inches. Most people sew separate month panels and join them, or use bigger blocks for fewer rows.
The quilt layout in the planner lays the blocks out by week or as twelve small month calendars, and can split each block into a high and a low triangle. Those layouts are part of the Planner Pack; the free preview above shows the same year as colored rows.
Fabric yardage
Each block is cut ½ inch bigger than its finished size to leave seam allowance, so a 4-inch block is cut 4½ inches. On 42-inch fabric with about 40 inches usable, you get eight 4½-inch squares per strip. The yardage is the number of strips times the cut size, plus ten percent, rounded up to the nearest eighth of a yard.
For a real example, here is Chicago in 2025, colored by the daily average temperature with eight even bands. Blocks add up to 365.
| Color | Range °F | Blocks | Fabric (yd) |
|---|---|---|---|
| dark purple | -2 to 9 | 5 | 0.25 |
| blue | 9 to 20 | 18 | 0.5 |
| aqua | 20 to 31 | 44 | 0.875 |
| green | 31 to 43 | 45 | 0.875 |
| yellow | 43 to 54 | 66 | 1.25 |
| orange | 54 to 65 | 57 | 1.125 |
| red | 65 to 76 | 66 | 1.25 |
| dark red | 76 to 87 | 64 | 1.125 |
Free and paid
Counts and the on-screen preview are free. The free planner covers any city and year, up to 8 color bands, the preview, counts and a daily table. The Planner Pack ($3.99, one-time) adds the printable chart, checklist and yarn list. See pricing.
Questions
How many blocks are in a temperature quilt?
One per day: 365, or 366 in a leap year. A year laid out seven across has 53 rows.
What size should the blocks be?
Four inches finished is popular and makes a throw-sized strip quilt. Larger blocks give fewer rows to sew. The planner’s fabric figures assume the block size you choose and 42-inch-wide fabric.
Can I use high and low temperatures?
With the Planner Pack, each block can be split into two triangles, the high in one and the low in the other.
Where does the weather come from?
From NOAA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, through its National Centers for Environmental Information daily summaries. Each city uses the nearest airport-grade weather station with a long record. NOAA data is public domain.