Sew The SEEDS: Saving Earth’s Endangered and Diverse Species is a community arts quilt project about endangered species.
There are two major threads in the Sew The SEEDS project. The class projects, started in the spring of 2013 with the help of Ms Linda Harada and Ms Aileen Rabina at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles, and panels made by individuals. My own panels currently consist of a panel for Martha the Passenger Pigeon, and Lonesome George the Pinta Island Tortoise. In both cases we hope that our work will inspire others to make their own panels and share them with us on the Sew The SEEDS website.
Sew The SEEDS kicked things off spring 2013 with two quilts from sixth grade classes at Thomas Starr King Middle School. Students from Ms. Harada and Ms. Rabina’s homeroom classes designed and constructed quilt panels for 14 species.
As part of Ms Harada’s science class they learned about biomes and the importance of food webs and chains. They also researched why each species was endangered, what part people play, and what we can do to help. Each group created a mini documentary, and a public service announcement. In Ms Rabina’s language arts class they learned how to write persuasive letters about the plight of their species, incorporating the concepts of ‘logos’, ‘ethos’, and ‘pathos’ into letters to newspapers and their representatives.
We received generous donations of remnant fabric from the Los Angeles Center Theater Group Costume Shop. You can view the individual panels on our website under Quilt Panels.
