Every year there comes a point in my state fair project where I have to set aside any doubts I might still harbor and move forward despite them.

That is where I found myself yesterday with all of my concerns about how I would fit together the pieces for the long-stemmed tumbler panels. In the spirit of moving forward, I spent most of the daylight deciding which color squares would go where:

It took awhile, but with all of those decisions finally made, I began the trepidation filled task of doing the actual piecing. I have been, to some degree, playing a game of catch up with regard to this project since I began it, and I knew that some things would fit and some things would not.

One of the things that did not fit as I would like was the block of four, four-round squares:

If I were a different person with a different aesthetic, I could have let it go, used some other color to fill the gap, and been on my merry way, but I am me, and instead of doing that I completed a final round (a tutorial about this method will be available after I finish the project) using the four colors of the four squares that comprise the block, and got the fit I wanted:

Then, before the sun descended on an already too brief day, I got this photo of my overall progress:

I have one week left to get this project done, and I am sure that the next seven days will be some of the longest and shortest days of my life.