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:

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:

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

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

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:

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.