This month has flown by, and when Thursday comes around again next week, it will be the first day of the new month.

The days will be shorter, the temperatures cooler, and there will only be 40 days left for me to finish this project.

But back to where I am now.

Having made substantive progress on the top-center clock panel Tuesday after the sun had gone down, on Wednesday I turned my attention to the bottom-center piano panel.

I arranged squares this way, then that, and then back this way; after what seemed a thousand small changes I finally had something I could work with:

I documented the layout, packed up the pieces, and after sunset, I began joining them by artificial light holding off on joins in places where, under my sometimes annoying flickering LEDs, the colors looked wrong. This afternoon, however with the advantage of full shade on a sunny day, I was able to sort out the problem areas and finish the joining.

I even weaved in the ends, and this is how the two panels looked from the back before trimming them:

and here his how they two panels looked after:

With all the new squares added and joined, and the myriad ends that generated woven in and trimmed, I turned them over to see how they looked:

I was pretty happy with the result, but the moment of truth had arrived.

Did the newly enhanced top and bottom center panels have a better fit with the corner pieces?

The answer to my relief and delight was yes:

And now that I am down to the last 46 days before the entry deadline, I am going to have to stay focused morning forward the only way possible: one stitch at a time.