For the third year running, I have managed not to get my planned North Carolina State Fair project completed in time for the deadline, and while in the heat of the moment I had thought that I would finish it with duct tape and staples if it came to that, when push came to shove, I decided not to turn it into a mixed media piece after all, but still, I persist.

I had stayed up all night working on it trying to sort out which color to put where by artificial light that can most charitably be described as wholly inadequate.

For this particular project, it isn’t just the colors of the pieces that need to play nicely with each other, it is also the colors of the various embroidered designs– the crochet rick rack and other seam stitching — that all need to work together, and while I made substantive progress, including this embroidered cupcake:

these four small French knot flowers and the slant stitch seam embroidery worked in Red Heart Super Saver grape fizz:

and this French knot/bullion stitch mash up decorating the teal crochet crazy quilt piece along with more slant stitches worked in the discontinued piñata colorway to add some interest:

when morning came, there were still gaps to be filled and seams to be adorned, and no where near enough time to get them done by noon.

So today, after a long night of dreamless sleep, I was ready to again tackle this project that will not be finished.

I started be adding some Vanna’s Choice honey flourishes to this fan in the lower left corner:

Then I moved over to the left and added a small, pink daisy chain flower with a French knot center to a small piece:

From there, I moved further to the left and made three small, purple French knot flowers:

After taking a break, I then moved to the upper right hand corner.

In the middle of the night while I had been looking at various embroidery samplers and stitches for inspiration, I had gotten the idea to embroider a fan on a crochet piece that was right next to a fan I had crocheted.

After tracking down the blanket stitch tutorial I needed, I got to work, and after several missteps, the embroidered fan was done:

That particular corner also had a sizable gap that needed filling, and after sorting through the pieces I still had available, I added to a claret one so that it would fit:

And as can be seen from this overview, there are still a few more gaps to be filled:

I had hoped that I would have this project done in time for the 2017 state fair, but this project is, as yet, still successfully resisting my efforts to finish it, in the meantime, I will move forward, one stitch at a time.

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