Dear quilters, needle-workers, and weavers of the earth!

We need your creativity, your sense of beauty, inspiration, community and patience to stick with the goal we set for ourselves. Making a beautiful blanket seems to incorporate all the qualities we need to make a difference in this world. So we sincerely ask for your help and inspiration to help etch the number 350 in the mind of every person in your community and in the mind of every person on earth.

350 is perhaps the most important number on the planet.

350 represents the difference between maintaining our current civilization and melting glaciers, rising sea-levels, devastating droughts, hunger and thirst, increasing storm intensities, spread of diseases, and extinctions which are all caused by global climate change.  And the main cause of today’s changing climate is the increase of carbon dioxide and other polluting emissions from the use of fossil fuels coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas in our everyday life.

 Unfortunately, the most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.

 We can avoid irreversible damage to the earth if we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back down to 350 parts per million.  That can be done if everybody on earth -- all 6.5 billion

 of us -- begin working together right away.  First we need to let everybody understand the objective:  350.

So we are planning a global grassroots project to unite the world around the number 350, and we need your help. We need to make sure that the solutions the world proposes to climate change are to scale

with the level of crisis that this number represents. Everyone on earth, from the smallest village to the cushiest corner office, needs to know what 350 means, through art, grassroots action, politics, music, and whatever makes sense to your community. The movement to spread that number needs to be beautiful, creative, and unstoppable.

 So why do we write to you?  Because of your commitment to patience, community, and art that we mentioned above.  It will take large doses of all of these things to make the dramatic shift in our

 society needed to reach the goal of 350.  Imagine quilts and blankets, designed and made by local groups of concerned citizens of the earth, all different, but all the same in that they include the number 350 in them.  Imagine people all over the world working together on the same goal - symbolizing our common goal of reaching 350 ppm, and thus saving our planet as we know it.

Please, if you are concerned about the future of our children, do consider participating in this historic campaign.  We are asking that you start your group of quilters, weavers, or needle-workers by May 31, and send us a photograph of your beginning steps to us by that date so we can share your work on our website with others.

 We know quilts take a long time, so we are asking that you aim to submit a final image of your blanket or quilt by October 31st  (even if it isn't quite complete by then), just in time for the next

 UN climate meetings in Poland.  At that time we will begin to "stitch" the hundreds of quilts and blankets together electronically on the website, to show the leaders of the world your support for the 350 goal.

Thank you very much for your help and support.

From, Kelly, Maiken, Doug, and the 350.org Organizing Team.

Please email Kelly, kelly@350.org with questions, interest, or photos of your project.  We will post submitted 350 quilt and blanket projects on our full website, which will be up in June.

And please pass this information on to anybody who might be interested in it.