Squaring up and filling gaps

I am at a point in what is now my 2017 North Carolina State Fair project that I have a lot of messy pieces and a lot of gaps.

A whole lot.

And sometimes, the messiness of the pieces makes it difficult for me to see what direction I need to go in order to reach the end, so the past couple of days I have worked on doing what I can to bring order to small bits of the center panel with the hope that those small bits will begin to make their more unruly compatriots behave.

To that end, I decided to square off this fan that I had crocheted and decorated:

crochetbug, crazy quilt crochet, embroidery on crochet, narrative crochet, crochet panels, crochet rectangles, crochet squares, crochet blanket, crochet afghan, crochet throw, crochet fan
A crochet fan in need of squaring off

Previously, I had spent a lot of time trying to crochet pieces that would fit the gaps; this time, however, I decided to crochet directly into the piece with the hope that the addition would still have the spirit of the crazy quilt, if not the precise construction, and I was delighted with the result:

crochetbug, crazy quilt crochet, embroidery on crochet, narrative crochet, crochet panels, crochet rectangles, crochet squares, crochet blanket, crochet afghan, crochet throw, crochet fan
The same crochet fan, squared off and ready to be joined to another piece

Buoyed by what I counted as a success, I decided to tackle this periwinkle piece:

crochetbug, crochet crazy quilt piece, embroidery on crochet, French knots
A lone periwinkle crochet crazy quilt piece

I had to finish the embroidery (which I did), and then I had to find a place for it to “go.” After looking over several possibilities, I decided to add it to these two pieces, and it was pretty much perfect except for one annoying gap along the edge:

The periwinkle crochet crazy quilt piece joined to its compatriots
The periwinkle crochet crazy quilt piece joined to its compatriots

Which ended up taking just three double crochets and one treble crochet to fill:

Filling in a gap with CraftSmart Value fuchsia
Filling in a gap with CraftSmart Value fuchsia

Then, so I could see what progress I had made, I laid out all of the pieces on the paper template that adorns my dining room table:

crochetbug, crochet command center
An overview of the crochet crazy quilt panel

What is becoming clearer to me with each passing day is that I need to spend as much time as humanly possible at this table, because while the pieces are portable, the project isn’t. I need to be able to see how the pieces are working together, and at this juncture the pieces are small enough that it isn’t practical.

So I will continue working one stitch at a time, and with any luck and a lot of persistence, I think I have a good shot at having it done in time for the fair.

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