In front of one of the many wedding dress boutiques on Plaza Saint-Hubert, which has become pedestrianized for the summer, stands a craftswoman with a special project: to create the longest train on the Plaza. And not just any train: a train made from embroidered dreams.
“There is nothing more beautiful than a dream,” Patsy Van Roost, nicknamed the urban fairy, repeats to the people who stroll along rue Saint-Hubert. Sitting in her small embroidery workshop, which displays colors as bright as her artist’s clothes, she listens from morning to night to the stories and hopes of passersby.
“Finding peace”, “Receiving the prosthesis for your leg [qu’il] “I’ve been waiting for three years,” “To have a multi-colored dress”; big or small, all wishes are enough to be immortalized on the train by Patsy’s expert hands. It seems that these dreams meticulously embroidered in attached letters are guaranteed to come true.
Ariane, 11, confides her biggest dream to the fairy: “To do the Olympics in skate ” she told him, her eyes sparkling. It’s not her arm in a cast, due to a double fracture she suffered while practicing her favorite sport, that prevents her from aspiring to become a renowned athlete.
Ariane’s wish, immortalized with a yellow thread on a scarlet fabric banner, is added to the bridal train that already stretches over 25 meters. In one week of work, the artisan of wishes collected nearly 90 testimonies; by mid-August, she hopes to capture 500.
A pretext to build relationships
“I don’t know any other way to take care of people than to ask them to tell their stories” (Nathalie Plaat, The duty) and “I want to sew a path between me and the rest of the world” (Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, Forest woman) are embroidered on the multi-colored cushions of the workshop chairs. These key phrases, as well as an image of a 4-kilometer train, are the living source of this project born for the Plaza.
“The Plaza is a lot of wedding dresses, that’s why I say I’m doing a wedding train. But in the end, it’s just an excuse to go and meet people. They’re the most beautiful thing here,” says Patsy.
Spreading her magic by inventing creative devices to meet others is at the heart of her projects. In the past, she enchanted Mile End by embroidering “recipes for love” on flowery pouches, and in 2020 she created banners to “make balconies talk” during lockdown.
On August 18, her dream train will be worn and paraded on the Plaza. “People always ask me: who is getting married? But it’s us, we are all getting married! This train is a way of uniting us through dreams,” she exclaims, all smiles, through the sound of the clicking of her sewing machine.