The past two days have been exceptionally busy, but when life was not interfering with crochet, I got out this beauty of a tome:

and poured over the 210 pages of essential embroidery stitches, and then, with varying degrees of success, tried them out on the crazy quilt pieces I have crocheted.

Using two plies of a strand of Red Heart Super Saver cornmeal and combining some simple embroidery stitches, I added what I think is a lot of pizazz to an already interesting multicolor crochet fan:

and while the piece does not yet feel “done” to me, I had made enough progress that I got out some Red Heart Super Saver shocking pink, split a strand of it as I had the cornmeal, and tried my hand at an embroidered bullion stitch:

I was so pleased with the way that turned out that I dug through my bag of crochet crazy quilt pieces, found this Red Heart Classic medium brown shape, and used some Red Heart With Love boysenberry to try my hand at a bullion rose, and the result was not half bad:

Then, to get a better sense of whether I was on the right track of needed to change course, I got this photo of all of the pieces with at least one element of surface decoration, arranged them, and took this photo:

While I knew the embroidery was an essential decorative element to this panel of the project, I did not know that it would be so much fun to do.

I have not yet developed all of the skills I will need to finish this project, but I am continuing to move forward, one stitch at a time.