Peter Pan

I have been working on child-size redwork quilt.  The blocks are scenes from Peter Pan, so it's a very sweet quilt.

The red sashing fabric is a much lighter weight fabric than the white squares, and has split open in several places.  I found an absolutely perfect match for the slightly faded turkey red color at Reproduction Fabrics (www.reproductionfabrics.com).  It was so perfect, that I bought a bunch of it.  And I mean a bunch.  With any luck, I've got enough to repair any such quilt for years and years to come.

Here's the "before" picture, in which you can see Nana the dog, Tiger Lily, and Smee.  (My daughter was Smee in a dance version of Peter Pan when she was about 12, and I've had a fondness for ol' Smee ever since.)

Here's the first piece of patch pinned on.

Here are the completed sashing patches.

How to re-create the ties posed a bit of a problem.  They quilt was tied with a wool yarn, which over the years and after probably being washed several times, had kind of felted themselves into little nobbins of wool.  I attempted to make puffy-looking ties, practicing on a bit of the red fabric.  One idea was to make a double bow and clip the ends.  All my attempts ended up looking more like snowflakes than nobbins.

At some point, I said to myself, "Foo, these look like snowflakes, but they should look like big ol' knots."  Ah ha!!  So I tried making big knots.  I took a stitch through the quilt......

tied a French knot, using both ends of the yarn for lots of puffiness, and to secure both ends......

put the needle through to the back........

ran the yarn ends into the batting..........

and, voilá, a big French knot that, even though constructed very differently, reads pretty much the same as the felted yarn ties.

And here's the final look of that area.

And here's poor Mr. Darling, asleep in the doghouse.

And the entire quilt: