What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Japanese rose, yarrow, common ninebark.

Meadow buttercup/ranunculus, daisy fleabane, salsify (gone to seed).  

First black-eyed Susan/rudbeckia of the season (early!), Canadian anemone, bladder campion.

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I made 15 daisy mug rugs.  I sewed right sides together and then turned out, rather than adding a binding.  

I hope to finish them this evening.

This is a tend-to-the-details day ...

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We had two good excursions, to Grant Woods Forest Preserve on Saturday and Chain O' Lakes State Park on Sunday.  (Left photo:  Fox River is on the horizon at Chain O' Lakes.) 

Wildflower medley:  spiderwort, yarrow, sorrel.  Cinquefoil, bird's foot ...

Top: Yellow sweet clover, meadow rose, false Solomon's seal.  Middle: Virginia waterleaf (also Shawnee salad), ox-eye daisy, dame's rocket.   Bottom:  Meadow buttercup, false white indigo, common nipplewort (really).

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The schedule has been rearranged to accommodate some unexpected in-patient medical tests for my husband.  So far things are okay and I hope he'll be home tomorrow.

In the studio:  it's been a while since I made a waffle stamps quilt.  I began with 2" strips cut to 8" or ...

Pond-lily, shooting star, mayapple flower.   Wild flag iris, blue wild indigo, Virginia waterleaf.  longbract or false wild indigo, purple vetch, blue-eyed grass.

Sunday afternoon's walk was along the lakefront.  Puccoons grow in sandy soil.  Upper right:  narrowleaf puccoon.  Lower right: hoary puccoon.   Upper left: a cluster ...

When I was on the trail it was 80 degrees -- a lovely spring afternoon.   We got home and in minutes the temperature dropped to 60! 

Clockwise:  wild strawberries, blue-eyed grass, starry false lily of the valley, wild geranium (aka cranesbill), apple blossom.

A butterfly (at the vegetable ...

 As I reported in the previous post, Friday evening and all day Saturday were program-filled.  It's 218 miles to get to Peoria and 218 miles back home.  But there I was, wide-awake at 4 a.m. Saturday.   I tuned my iPad to the BBC and watched the Coronation.  I was captivated by all of it (though I admit I snoozed during the reporters' announcements of dignitaries as they entered Westminster Abbey and the long carriage rides).  

An advantage of such an event in our digital/social media age is that all the details are available online.  I learned about ...

Bumblebee on liatris (blazing star), New England aster, a big mushroom.

Riverbank grapes, hawthorn, bottle grass.

Monarch on butterfly weed, lobelia, gray dogwood. 

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The first Corningware I got was in the late 1970's, a Christmas gift. Back then it was new and pricey relative to my budget.  I have used the 10" casserole a lot!  The stains won't come out and the glass lid is very dishwasher-etched.  When I found the same size, same pattern, never-used for ...

Coneflower, compass plant, lobelia.

Sumac, wild cucumber, gray dogwood.

Common reed, elderberry "lace" (after the birds have eaten the berries), ragweed. 

 Our long-anticipated Alaska trip did not turn out as we planned. The outbound travel (O'Hare to Sitka by way of Seattle) was very disorienting for my husband.  Fortunately we could get flights home that evening/night, including a nonstop overnight flight from Anchorge to O'Hare.   I'm calmer now as I type this but you can well imagine that at the time I was *beyond* upset.   On the positive side, once we got home his mood stabilized.  

Cardinal flower / lobelia was a new one for me. It was growing alongside a stream in a shady patch.    

Teasel is invasive  This patch was right next to the path so I could easily get closeup photos.  The upper and lower right photos show it in bloom, with all the little tiny flowers.   

The lower landscape photo is the Des Plaines River at Sedge Meadow. The middle landscape photo is one of the ponds at McDonald Woods.  From the LCFPD website ...

Thunderstorms between midnight and 5 a.m. on Saturday brought very welcome rain.   The sun was out the rest of the weekend.

Pinnate prairie coneflower, jewel weed, rosin weed,  bluebell (campanula), spurge, joe pye weed.

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I do find time to sew, of course!

I used the picnic basket block (the guild July BOM) for the next batch of daisy mug rugs for an ongoing P.E.O. project.   All the baskets use the same daisy print.   (2 yards for all 16.)

We were shocked and saddened by the shooting in Highland Park on the Fourth of July.  Among the victims were the superintendent of one of our local school districts and her eight-year-old son.  (HP is 25 miles south of us.)    

Wildflowers are in abundance!  Our outings this week were to Van Patten Woods, Raven Glen, and Illinois Beach. 

Top: purple prairie clover, purple coneflower, butterfly weed, hoary puccoon, tall cinquefoil, salsify (gone to seed), lead plant, Deptford pink, flowering spurge.

I love Turk's Cap lilies.  The photo collage includes a view from directly above and from directly below.

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Upper left: a tangle of garter snakes (two here; a third slithered away (perhaps establishing dominance before mating?).   Downy pagoda plant (blephilia ciliata -- a new one). Cow parsnip.  Middle: common cinquefoil. Columbine/aquilegia (there are blue ones in our ...

I apologize that I haven't commented on your blog posts this week.  I use Bloglovin and it was down for several days.  It's back today, fortunately.  (Barbara recommended Feedly and I'm going to set that up. Better to have two blog feeds than none.)

The AAUW summer luncheon was Tuesday.   No program, just pleasant conversation.  We had was a silent auction to benefit our STEM scholarship. I contributed some of the patchwork potholders I made for Joy's Table Scraps and this quilt as well as a stack of books that I'd read or that I ...

A bumble bee on wood betony (also called Canadian lousewort).  Wild geranium, Virginia creeper (with horsetail in the background), false Solomon's Seal, golden Alexander, horsetail, fleabane.

This one is about a foot long. There are three ...

Wildflowers at Lyons Woods:  trillium, yellow rocket, garlic mustard. Bristly buttercup, forget-me-not, cow parsnip, white and purple violets. (It's a great year for violets -- there are a lot in our yard, too.)

Apple ("eating apple," the app called it), crabapple, brand-new oak leaves. 

 The memorial service for our good friend Bob was Saturday morning.   Such a wonderful tribute to a long life, well-lived!   (Here is his obituary.)  There were many people -- his widow, four daughters, most of the 17 grandchildren, and many of the great-grandchildren -- and so many friends.  Bob and Liz hosted more than 30 exchange students through ...

Though it was a chilly, windy 19 yesterday, today it got up to 52.   I snapped a photo of just-emerged skunk cabbage along the trail in the ravine at the end of our block.  Spring is in the air!

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I'm up to the binding on the Double X / Old Maid's Puzzle quilt.   (I did correct the mis-turned hourglass block....see Wednesday's post.)

The last week of summer has been sunny, warm, and dry.  

Top center: closeup of goldenrod florets; middle center: liatris with a bumblebee; right center: aster; lower right: another aster.  Lower left:  thistledown! 

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Right: a monarch and a bee with compass plant. 

Sawtooth sunflower, tall boneset, goldenrod. Jewelweed, false aster, Drummond's aster. Panicled aster, grass-leaf goldenrod, purplestem aster.  

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