Backing it up

Land of Flood and Drought 2016 is done ...

Hard to capture because it's 53" long and 7" wide ...

But these slightly closer views of the front ...

and the back are a little bit clearer ...

So here's what came to me in the middle of the night that pushed me to get this done: I realized the total annual rainfall of 50.8" was close to the length of the cloth. So I drew a line with water erasable marker showing each month's cumulated rainfall using the 1" patches as a grid from the beginning of the year at the bottom ...

through the end of the year at the top ...

and everything in between, with the seams between the patches standing in for the fractured limestone that is such a critical part of our local aquifers ...

The cloth was quilted using no.12 and no.8 perle cotton (thank you Judy Martin), a middle layer of harem cloth (thank you Jude Hill), and a backing of linen. Which is to say, it's more sturdy than drape-y.

After it was completely quilted, I trimmed back the harem cloth ...

folded the backing cloth away from the front edge and ladder stitched the two together ...

Resulting in this, front ...

and back ...

The final step was trimming the excess backing to a rough 1/4" from the seam, then snipping and fraying to achieve a stable raw edge ...

Now all that remains is creating sleeves at the top and bottom for the wooden supports Don cut for me. I'll be sure to post a picture once it's hanging.