BERENE Campbell had a dream about a quilt.
It was the night of April 15, just after the Boston Marathon bombings that left three dead and injured more than 250.
"It just kind of gets you in the gut," said Campbell, a North Vancouver seamstress and graphic designer.
She sat tethered to her TV watching the aftermath of the bombings, eventually seeing a photo of Richard Martin, the eight-year-old boy who died in the blast.
The news broadcast showed a photo of Martin holding a sign with the words No More Hurting People.
The image and the family tragedy left Campbell feeling shattered. A lifelong seamstress and a quilter for the past six years, Campbell had a lucid dream about bringing a quilt to Boston that night.
"It sounds like a really kooky, hippie story, but this is what happened," she said. "I had made these love banners in my dream and I had sent them to Boston . . . and they were hanging in this park with these trees and people were coming in and just being there and feeling uplifted by the love and the energy of it."
One month later, her dream became a reality as Campbell helped display 1,756 quilting flags throughout Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.
By her own admission, Campbell seemed like an odd choice to undertake such a project.
"I had no connection to Boston. I'd never been to Boston, I didn't know anyone in Boston," she said.
Campbell reached out to Newbury, Mass., resident Amy Friend, a woman with whom she had only a vague, online relationship.
"I don't think she had any idea what she was getting herself in for. I don't think either of us had any idea," she said.
Campbell came up with dimensions for the flags, requesting quilters avoid religious and political messages. The bi-coastal duo utilized blogs, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram to spread their message.
"Within a very short space of time, it went viral," Campbell said.
One month later they had received flags from all over the world.
"Quilters are an amazing group of people. As soon as there's any kind of tragedy, they step up and make quilts," Campbell said.
Quilting groups and family members took part, but some of the most moving bunting flags were stitched by people Campbell had never met.
Two Guelph, Ont., sisters designed a flag for their brother, a marathoner who failed to keep the pace he'd set for himself in Boston.
"He was hurting a little bit and he had to slow down," Campbell explained. "The finish time when the bomb went off was very close to his goal time.
"It's not specifically the flags, but the reasons that people reacted to it," she said.
But while flags were pouring in, there was still no place to put them.
Despite describing herself as "completely unqualified," Campbell said she was possessed with a calm certainty everything would fall into place.
As it turned out, Friend learned that Boston's Museum of Fine Arts was planning something big for Memorial Day weekend.
"I went online and I googled pictures of the MFA 'cause I'd never heard of it," Campbell said.
The museum took a risk and agreed to display the quilting flags, flying Campbell out to help with the installation.
After two days, each flag was hung in the museum.
"The whole point of it was that your average Bostonian who may not normally come to the museum because it's not really their thing - I wanted them all there to see that the world really felt for them."
On that end-of-May long weekend, Campbell said the lineup to get into the museum wrapped around the block.
