Needlework takes time, usually about twice as much as I estimate. For that reason, it’s important to start with a reasonably small bite out of the ecosystem described in the books so we can have something lush and good-looking. The colony tree is huge, and has lots of interlocking platforms around its stem.

I started working on a single platform as proof of concept. The sample platform is made out of a 50×70 cm piece of 2.5 cm corrugated cardboard – very stable but light, and the right size for still being reasonably easy to handle and ship. The sample trees top out at about 25 cm of height, which is pretty much the maximum that’s possible to have on a platform that size and not look totally unrealistic.

The platform is currently living on top of my embroidery stand. I’m envisioning some kind of backdrop showing a bit of the bark of the colony tree itself, possibly including the entrance hole, and a way to safely attach platforms to this. If you have experience with this kind of model and ideas on how to achieve something like this, I’d love to hear from you!

I did take pictures when building the platform and will do a tutorial on this in a later post.