Plant Trees - Conversing with the Earth 3
- Allison James
- Mar 13
- 2 min read
This is the third piece in my series for Conversing with the Earth. When hung together there is an environmental message to be read: STOP FIRE and FlOODS, PLANT TREES. In each piece the intention has been to make the lettering subtle, so as not to overwhelm the visual impact of the piece, but yet to still carry the ideas. Planting more trees is an important step towards combatting the effects of climate change since trees absorb carbon dioxide. They store it in their leaves, branches and roots, using it in the process of photosynthesis to create energy to grow and they produce oxygen, for us, as the byproduct of this process. They are indeed the lungs of the planet. As the Trillion Trees campaign agues, forests are our greatest hope in the climate crisis that we see around us today (www.triliontrees.org).
Curiously, however, I struggled quite hard to make this piece. I knew it would be about trees and had thought at first to depict a forest, or lots of trees. Indeed, I made a quilt that did just that but, after consideration, I felt it was too cartoon like and the message too intrusive. I liked the bright colours but, in the end, decided to start again.
I chose this time to focus on just one tree and to hint at the suggestion of the possibility of more trees to come by depicting seeds and future new growth. I cut out the main tree silhouette and fused it to the background, choosing a batik fabric that is suggestive of tree bark. The thin black branches that weave through this tree depict the new growth to come. The green ovals are seeds
and these are accompanied by seed stitching and many, many French knots that also depict seeds.
Together they show the cycle of nature as, potentially, we can head towards a greener future. The green background fabric was chosen to represent the greener future.
I had intended to create the lettering by simply outlining the letters with machine stitching , leaving a raised unquilted section that would subtly spell out PLANT TREES. However, even though it is densely quilted around the letters, standing back, they were rather difficult to see. I therefore handstitched around them using perle thread and whipped running stitch so that the letters became more visible.
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