Milkweed and caterpillar

"Cycles" quilt challenge: Milkweed...
(Tap on the photo if it's out of focus!)

The Minnesota Contemporary Quilters' current challenge is to create a wallhanging no larger than 36" x 36." The theme is "Cycles." I'm in a small quilting group of nine women and we decided to make a group piece based on the cycle of the milkweed plant.

We divided a large paper circle into nine equal pie-shaped pieces, each of us taking a pie-piece to use as a template for representing one stage of the milkweed cycle. I depicted the milkweed plant with mature leaves. Willy-nilly, I added a caterpillar, which led each of the other women to incorporate into her stage of the milkweed cycle the appropriate stage of the monarch butterfly's life cycle.

The milkweed plant is absolutely necessary to the life cycle of a monarch butterfly; there is no other plant that monarchs use. We all know that monarch numbers are decreasing rapidly and dramatically due to loss of habitat  and the use of chemical sprays along their migratory path. Milkweed plants are native to Minnesota prairies - we have some milkweed in the prairie my husband planted in our front yard.

Happy spring in a couple days. It is snowing here at the moment.

~Andrea