All day yesterday and today I toiled deep in the crochet and embroidery mines. Weaving in ends, trimming them, crochet rickrack, tacking it down, using a yarn needle and working one chain stitch after another a zigzag pattern.

Sometimes I used a color that ended up not working, and I had to take it out and begin anew. But I persisted, and by four this afternoon, I had almost all of the seams tricked out, most of the crochet crazy quilt pieces festooned with various embroidered flowers and leaves and such, and a lot of ends woven in and trimmed.

Here is an overview of how the center panel looked:

And here is a detail of the space that has yet to be filled:

I didn’t really have any ideas about what sort of pieces to make to fill the space, but I had this collection of pieces that I had joined earlier handy:

and I decided to take it apart and see if there were any pieces I could use.

It turned out that there were, and while two of the crochet crazy quilt pieces required minor adaptations, and one I frogged completely and started from scratch, having a few pieces at had for adaptation and inspiration had the effect of getting me going on something that I had feared being “stuck” on, and truth be told, I don’t have time to get stuck:

The sun has set for now, so there are no new color decisions to be made, but with the notes that I have and the ends yet to be woven in, I will continue working on this crochet crazy quilt panel that is both the center of and central to this piece, and I will be moving forward the only way possible: one stitch at a time.