Repairing a Crochet Hanging

My MIL had a friend with an heirloom crocheted wall hanging that had un-raveled.  She asked if I could fix it.  I was so intimidated after doing a Google search for instructions that I set it aside and forgot about it.  Shame on me.  Recently stumbled across it and decided that I felt bad enough to just try to fix it right. 

Essentially, if anyone stumbles across this post looking for instructions on repairing crochet doilies and/or wall hangings, what I would say is just try.  It can't hurt - the hanging was useless as it was.  Also, you have to give up on perfection.  I couldn't even mimic my own tension and style, let alone someone else's tension and crochet style.  So just jump in.  I started by un-raveling enough to be certain I'd found all the loose ends.  It wouldn't do any good to repair if the piece came apart again.  This took courage as I ultimately had to "cut" more thread off - you can't crochet with 3 inches of thread which is tangled because it's been like this for ages.  Next, I tried to knot each loose end at an appropriately strong point - mostly at the double crochet points.  Then it was a matter of tying on to the lowest point for repair - weaving my own loose ends and trying my best to minim to the tension and crochet style of the original.  This was probably the most challenging for me because I use a significantly tighter tension.  I ultimately ripped my own work out and re-crocheted sections multiple times.  As I joined to the existing portion on each side I did a liberal amount of slip stitches to "climb" to the next row, again, trying to hide the knots I had to make on the loose ends. 

The repair spans the entire width of the "A" in "Came", pictured above.  On the right, you can clearly see the heavy double crochets where I tied on.  On the left, towards the top, you can see my error - adding a gap where one should not be as I joined to the original.  I didn't realize this error until I was all fixed and I was too scared that I might do more damage fixing my error that everyone might not see.

I hope the owner is not disappointed.  I'm pleased as punch to have fixed such a lovely work of art.