Sprouts of Hope: Sustainability Quilt Project

Adding Detail to Our Quilt

By Maya

At our 6^th quilt meeting with Clara, we began to add detail to the city. Windows, clotheslines, gardens, and wind turbines went up on the rooftops. Kaya created a peace dove representing the many peace dove parades we have been a part of through Roots and Shoots. The dove flies with a banner behind her with the words of our Sprouts of Hope motto written on it,

“Have a dream. Make a difference.”

Risa created a bike path that zigs and zags through the air — a way for us to make visual our hope that people will figure out all sorts of new ways to move around the city.

I designed a compost heap full of worms and decomposing food. The mound symbolizes our efforts to get composting into the Cambridge public school cafeterias, so that they can be sustainable in disposing of the tons of food waste. And we put solar blinds on a few of the buildings to show how glad we are that our new public library in Cambridge was built in ways that are so energy efficient.

Clara assembled the portraits we had made and showed up how they will look along the rim of the quilt. She added a thin blue boarder where we are planning to write some form of a story. We made portraits of inspiring environmentalists. Risa did one of Bill McKibben, Clara did one of Wangari Maathai, and I did one of Jane Goodall. All the portraits came out great, and will hopefully be easily recognizable.

Our next step is coming up with a title — possibly in the form of a question — that embodies the message of the quilt. The quilt is coming along nicely, but there is still a lot of work to do to develop our futuristic sustainable city.

Sprouts of Hope: Sustainability Quilt Project

Starting To Make Our "Real" Quilt

By Lilly

As the Sprouts move further into our project with Clara, we have started putting together the pieces that will be in the final quilt. On our fifth visit with to the studio, we began putting together the final draft of the city we had been brainstorming ideas about the week before. The result was a much more organized and thought-through version of the city.

We kept many elements, such as the rooftop gardens, and a swinging chimpanzee (in honor of Dr. Jane Goodall, who founded Roots & Shoots) and an aquarium, all of which now look a bit different than when we sketched them in earlier versions.

This time we thought long and hard about where on the quilt everything would look best and how all of the different pieces can work together. We are using lots of very interesting fabric for the different buildings.

We have yet to incorporate into our final quilt some details, such as our clotheslines and bike path. We also plan on putting in some new elements that were not part of our brainstorms, such as a Peace Dove parade, a Roots & Shoots activity we enjoy doing, and composting, a program we helped to start in our public schools.

During the past few weeks we have been revising and improving our quilt city to try and make it the best it can be and to really get our ideas for a better and more sustainable future across to those who will one day look at it.

As we continue making our quilt, we will be thinking more and more about the possibilities for the sustainable future of our world. We hope our quilt will inspire others in the same way. Here's a look at how we constructed our buildings.

Sprouts of Hope: Sustainability Quilt Project

Sustainability As We See It

By Kaya

On our fourth visit to Clara’s studio, the Sprouts of Hope began to make our ideas come alive in a rough outline of the sustainability quilt.

Looking at the “sketch quilts” from our last visit, we adapted ideas we liked from our old sketches and transferred them onto our new larger sketch — moving us a step closer to making the real quilt.

We created buildings with trees and mushrooms, flowers on rooftops and fish swimming, and even seaweed in the windows.

While we used our earlier ideas, we also came up with new ones along the way—with various visions of how we wish our city could be in the future with sustainability as its core value. Risa designed a bike path that goes across buildings and a steady flow of purple bicycles are riding on it. Toward the top of it you can see our Sprouts of Hope motto "Have a Dream, Make a Difference."

Lilly created laundry lines that hang between buildings with all kinds of clothes being air-dried on them rather than using a lot of energy with a dryer. In the upper part of the quilt we put a large sun, a way to illuminate the idea of solar power.

Around the edge of this central piece of our quilt is where we will put our self-portraits along with portraits of people who devote their lives to environmental sustainability. Of course, Dr. Jane Goodall will be one of the people we feature on our quilt. And in her honor, we also include a chimpanzee as a way to express our appreciation for her on-going efforts to save chimpanzees. And there will be wind turbines.

We have accomplished plenty! At last, our ideas are coming together in ways that give us a good sense of what our quilt will look like when we finish. Soon, we will start work on the final version of our sustainability quilt and through it share with others our idea of a more utopian “greener” society!

Sprouts of Hope Quilt Project

Conceiving Our Urban Sustainable Space

By Eliza

During our third visit with Clara, the Sprouts really got the ball rolling, and we thought about what messages we want our quilt to spread. We talked about what sustainability means to us, and Clara presented some ideas to us.

Here's her sketch:

The idea of innovation and green cities interested us, and we decided to try to draft some possible ideas for a quilt displaying the idea of a green city.

Kaya and Risa made a patch with bicycles and buildings with rooftop gardens, as well as different forms of alternative energy such as solar power and wind power.

Maya and I made a design with skyscrapers, as well. Our quilt had a tree with a chimpanzee swinging from it, and the roots planted firmly into the ground – similar to the familiar Roots & Shoots symbol.

Melissa’s design was focused on the idea of the seventh generation.

We discussed the possibility of making windows of the skyscrapersin our quilt depict other aspects of sustainability, such as compact florescent light bulbs (CFLS).

We also talked about the idea of having some kind of earth in our quilt – maybe with bikes going around it. We are excited to narrow down our ideas next week and come up with a plan for exactly what our quilt will look like!

Sprouts of Hope Quilt Project

Creating Self-Portraits

By Risa

On March 18th, the Sprouts of Hope visited Clara's studio to make self-portraits for our quilt. We first picked our skin colors. All the fabric choices were exaggerated so some of our faces were tan and some were pink.

We cut out our faces by folding the fabric in half and cutting half-circles, looking in the mirror to determine our face shapes. The most fun part was probably the hair. We picked fabric with curls, lines and other shapes depending on our hair texture and then we cut and styled it.

After hair, we added facial features. Our noses were cut out of the same fabric as the rest of our faces, but we were more creative with eyes and lips.

The more features that each of us added to our portraits the more these pieces of cloth started to look like us. It is easy to tell who is who even though the faces are not as detailed as a drawing or photo would be.

We added accessories such as earrings and necklaces to distinguish ourselves even more. After cutting and laying out the portraits, we glued them down and gave them to Clara, who is going to sew them.

Creating our self-portraits was a lot of fun and we laughed a lot, while giving each other advice!

Sprouts of Hope's Quilt Project

Making Sustainability Visual

By Maya

What better way to spread a message than by quilt? In early March, the Sprouts of Hope had the pleasure of visiting the wonderful studio of quilt maker, Clara Wainwright. It’s in Allston, which is just across the river from where we live in Cambridge, and it’s a place we are going to return to many times as Clara helps us make a quilt about sustainability.

After standing in awe of her endless yards of beautiful cloth, we sat down to discuss our ideas. Our plan is to lend this quilt to people and places that are engaged in projects, conversations or activities about environmental sustainability so they can convey a visual message as they act in sustainable ways to help the Earth.

Initially we had drawn a basic outline for the quilt and devised a list of local people to go to for inspiration and ideas —such as our Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis. She has chaired the city’s environment committee and has been a great friend to the Sprouts.

Here's a picture of Henrietta when she came to the launch of our book, Energy Lite, and its companion Kill A Meter at the Cambridge Public Library. Thanks, Henrietta!

We want to talk again with Kristen van Hoffmann, who is the Cambridge Public School’s Sustainability Manager. It's been great to see all she is doing to make our schools more energy efficient and help all of the students to learn keeping our planet sustainable. And we hope to get ideas from other Roots & Shoots members in New England.

When Clara got us talking about ways to think about and design our quilt, we realized the many possibilities we have for displaying sustainability. We can use portraits of people who are doing things to support sustainability, and symbols, words, color, and composition. We can go local. Or we can go global. Or we can do both. As we talked with Clara, we asked ourselves, “What is sustainability?” One reoccurring idea was that it is the notion of preserving resources through multiple generations as we pass on and share knowledge.

To ignite our imaginations, Clara had us make mandalas. These are concentric visual diagrams (like this one) that have spiritual and ritual significance in Buddhism and Hinduism. Mandalas start out with a simple circle inside a square. To make ours, Clara had us cut various shapes out of colorful pieces of cloth and set them down on the mandala in a symmetrical design. For us, the mandala would become our personal interpretation what it means to sustain the Earth.

We made two mandalas —separated by a conversations we had about our project. We made the first one before we talked about sustainability, then the other one after we did. It was interesting to see how our discussions influenced each of our designs.

Our first mandala seemed more general.

Our second one honed in on more specific ideas.

Making these mandalas showed us how challenging it will be to choose which images will best convey the messages we want our quilt to convey. At our next meeting the plan is to start our quilt by making self-portraits to sew into its border. We plan on talking with the people we had on our list — and likely adding more people to our list. This way, we’ll be able to create more portraits for the border. And we are working to come up with four environmental leaders whose portraits we are likely to put in the quilt’s four corners.

If you have ideas for who those people should be, please let us know.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this collaboration comes together as a quilt.

Cradles to Crayons: Volunteering to Help Other Kids

By Eliza

Just before Risa and I joined the other Sprouts at Clara Wainwright’s studio, we volunteered at Cradles to Crayons in nearby Brighton. It is an organization that provides homeless kids and those from low-income families in Boston with all kinds of things, including clothes, toys, books, and school supplies. These are things kids need, and receiving a package from Cradles to Crayons is one of those happy moments in a kid’s life.

While we were there, we helped sort donated items that would then be packaged and shipped to kids. We were in charge of sorting through clothing for little kids and making sure that all of the donations were of good quality.

We had a blast and it is definitely something that we would like to do again! Find out more at http://cradlestocrayons.org/

Making Cambridge Schools Sustainable


By Eliza

Through the years the Sprouts of Hope have worked on many sustainability projects in the Cambridge public schools —at King Open, our K-8 school, and now in high school, at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). When we were in elementary school, we went before the school committee to let them know why they should get rid of the cafeteria's polystyrene food trays. After our second time testifying about this problem, the school committee voted for the school district to investigate this problem and that led to us working with school district officials to implement composting in our cafeteria.

King Open became the composting pilot program that other schools in the district are adopting. The Sprouts of Hope also introduced the idea of waste free lunches at King Open.

Many other individuals and groups have been a part of this same effort to improve sustainability in Cambridge. Meryl Brott, the Recycling Program Manager for the City of Cambridge at the Department of Public Works, helped us to start the compost program at King Open and has championed its movement into other schools. We are so happy to discover that she just received the The Green Hero honor from the Cambridge School District for the months of January/February 2012.

Here's a slideshow Meryl created to show why and how schools set up their composting programs.

Our high school’s environmental action club, which a few of the Sprouts recently joined, is also active in making a positive difference in our school's sustainability. During the last two years our entire high school was rebuilt in a "green way" and will be LEED certified. There are eco-friendly improvements still taking place — by students and teachers —to make what goes on in the high school more energy efficient, eco-friendly and sustainable.

One great thing the school district did was to hire Kristen Von Hoffmann to be its first sustainability coordinator. We've met with Kristen (she's sitting in the middle of us in the photo below) to talk about her initiatives and we want to help her to engage more students in getting involved in supporting her efforts. And she's clearly doing a good job!

According to the Fall 2011 Recycling Summary published by the Cambridge Department of Public Works, the Cambridge Public Schools recycled 82.8 tons (165,648 pounds) of waste during the first semester of school. In fact, in December 2011 alone, 41,062 pounds of waste were recycled. On average, that is around 7.5 pounds per student! Most schools are even taking part in a recycling competition to see which school can recycle the most waste.

Recycling is clearly a main focus of sustainability in the Cambridge Public Schools, but progress with composting is happening, too, thanks to Meryl's efforts. Cambridgeport, a K-8 school in our district, recently began composting and our high school begins composting in April. When that happens, five of the district's schools will be doing school-wide composting in their cafeterias!

Water is another focus of improving sustainability. In the high school's cafeteria, we have new water dispensers where students fill up their reusable water bottles for free instead of buying bottled water. In fact, our cafeteria no longer offers bottled water! Additionally, CRLS is trying to reduce its carbon footprint. Take a look at how we are partnering with NSTAR to try to save energy in our school:

It makes us so happy to know that so many people are working on the issue of sustainability in our schools. We hope a lot of students will get involved and help. If you want to find out what you can do, then email Kristen Von Hoffmann, the Cambridge Sustainability Coordinator, at Kvonhoffmann@cpsd.us.