She is called the “Fairy of Mile-End” because she comes up with art projects that involve the community.

This summer, Patsy Van Roost is sewing people’s dreams together into a long, colorful train of fabric.

With her sewing machine on a table and two chairs just off St-Hubert Street near St-Zotique Street, Van Roost embroiders the dreams of strangers-turned-friends.

“I’m here to listen to people’s dreams, but a dream is just an excuse to talk,” she said. “Once they sit in that chair and watch my hands at work, it opens their hearts.”

People sit there, talking and exchanging ideas while Van Roost sews their dreams into a 55-meter-long stream of colorful fabric that grows daily.

“What I’m embroidering is just a tiny flicker of a relationship that took place between the two people,” Van Roost said. “It’s something like a confession.”

So far, 203 dreams are depicted on the fabric and the number is growing, and each of them tells its own story.

Van Roost says connecting dreams brings them closer to reality.

“I combine it with other dreams so that the chance that it will come true, or that you will do whatever it takes to make it come true, increases,” she said.

She has more than halfway achieved her goal of a 100-meter-long wedding procession that is intended to symbolize what unites the people in this colorful community.

On August 18, it will serve as a table runner for 100 people who will picnic together in Plaza St-Hubert.