Visitors in the Garden

Look who I found crawling on the parsley.

When I first found them they all looked like the upper 2 caterpillars. I decided to try to identify them to see if they were good caterpillars or bad caterpillars.

My well-used butterfly book that I received in 1972 didn't show any caterpillars resembling mine so I switched to the Internet. All the caterpillars that came up with parsley didn't look anything like it. So, I focused on the white stripe. Everything that came up had stripes going from head to toe, not across.

Next, I tried white band and that did it. The same caterpillar associated with parsley came up. After I clicked into enough sites I discovered that the caterpillar starts out looking one way and then changes. The photo above was taken 24 hours after I first found the caterpillars and you an see that the lower one has changed but the remnants of the stripe is still visible.

The caterpillars will become black swallowtails.

I went back to my old book and read the entry for black swallowtails.

"When small, the larva, like that of most swallowtails, is dark brown with a white saddle mark. It becomes green, as illustrated, as it matures."

I guess if I would have read instead of looking at the pictures I could have figured it out the old-fashioned way. The swallowtail is the first butterfly in the book.

The oldest caterpillar is turning more yellowish. But, it's still not green.

Comments

It's about time - the big reveal

My bright quilt was finished in June but I wanted to wait until both were done before sharing the pictures. Quilting the blue quilt didn't take long but finishing the binding sure did. I did procrastinate a bit as it was too warm to have a huge quilt on my lap for most of the summer. After this, I'll probably do all the binding on my sewing machine (and stick to smaller quilts). Notice the cut-out corners? That was a challenge. I found instructions here and it looked easy enough but I wished I had practiced some. After a lot of finessing I finally got good miters but I could have done much better. The cut-out corners allow the quilt to hang nicely over the edges of the mattress and it's a perfect match for a full sized mattress. But, the top edge isn't even close to the pillows. I wonder how the quilt fit on the bed it was made for. Here, at last, is the original quilt that I was copying. I just noticed - all of the baskets are

Basted

A few weeks ago I was at the Local Quilt store basting my bright sampler. It's been ready to go for a while. I've been working on a baby quilt and it's now done. It's been a while since I've quilted so I'm glad I had a quilt to warm up on. Next I need to pull a folding table out of the garage and re-arrange my quilting space. This quilt will have a lot more drag than the baby quilt. I've also been looking at pictures of similar quilts looking for quilting pattern inspiration. I'm thinking of taking the easy way out and u se wavy lines like this quilt . I should start quilting next weekend!

The last 2 blocks and the tops are done!

I needed 2 more blocks to finish the gray version of the quilt. I ended up making simple 9 patch/half square triangle blocks. One is the yellow block in the lower left. Here it is closer up. When I made the half square triangles I had the red fabric going the wrong way so you are seeing the backside of the fabric. So the red in the triangles is a little lighter than the red in the center. It wasn't worth redoing. The other corner has a blue block and I managed to get the front of all the fabrics showing. So, here's what it looks like almost complete. And here's the blue version of the quilt. I've got the backing and the batting for the gray quilt (the backing is in the washer now) and I'm working on the thread to use for quilting and how to quilt it. They are too big for me to free-motion quilt. I don't have the space. As it is, quilting with the walking foot will be a challenge. These tops deserve so

Erica's Stitches

Search This Blog