NEWS FROM AROUND THE REGIONS

Merseyside Group
The Tree of Life Project Workshop, on 6th Oct. 2009


We welcomed everyone and especially the 3 women who have not been to these meetings before. We also welcomed the fact that the idea is clearly catching on and creating a wide interest so we discussed the possibility of breaking down into small working groups in future when we start the actual sewing in order to manage the large numbers effectively.

Sheila summarised our thinking so far and presented the work we agreed on the last time we met. The background cloth now has 4 delicate colours stitched on top forming square blocks of colour: red (fire), green (earth), dark blue (water) and light blue (air). Sheila had also drawn and cut out the outline of the tree itself in paper, whose final shape we discussed. We passed round a few pictures of other tree of life representations and discussed how realistic or stylised we want ours to be.

We also discussed:
• the acceptability / unacceptability of putting animals and birds in the tree, bearing in mind the traditions of Islamic art. Nahida explained the reason for the absence of such figures in Islamic art. We made no clear decision about this – to be discussed again later.
• the relative proportions of the roots, trunk and branches and whether they extend off the edge.
• the colour of various materials for the above. We chose the one that Sheila had brought.
• messages that will go either on the tree or around the border which will be added at the end. We can use Arabic calligraphy as well as quotations in English. One particular word suggested was “Subhanallah – Praise to God” .
• the use of shisha glass (where can we get it from?)

Charlie’s mother, who had been at the last meeting, had done some research for us and had sent a laptop presentation, particularly about the designs and philosophy of William Morris, which Charlie read out to us. We are very grateful to her and hope she will be able to attend some of our future workshops.

We decided, after much discussion, to stitch the tree outline on before the next meeting and Thameena very kindly offered to do this work. We thank her most sincerely for taking this on.

Next Meeting we shall begin work on the roots and we will gradually work up the tree after that. The roots will be extensive, going off the edges and we shall build them up to become knobbly, rough and multi-layered. They can carry some of our messages, especially those about our common humanity and heritage. One particular suggestion was to embroider the places where we were all born.
Our homework is to think of what each of us would like to write on the roots or how to want to work them.
Maureen and Nan will buy materials for the next stage and bring them to the meeting, but if anyone has scraps at home they would like to incorporate please bring them along.

Gwen