'It shows all the love': How one woman's love of quilting is helping her face cancer

Paula Gallant has never had any trouble keeping busy. 

It's just who she is, says her husband Ernest. For years she owned a successful bakery business that she ran out of her home near Wellington, P.E.I., making rolls and biscuits day-to-day and thousands of meat pies during the holiday season.

But that came to an end in 2011, after her doctor told her she had Stage 4 breast cancer. Forced to close her business, she said keeping busy is now more important than ever. 

Gallant has found a way to do that with quilts. 

"Of course when I got sick, I said, 'Well, I've got to do something with my life, I'm not going to give up now.' So I started making quilts for my family."   

She's lost count, but she knows she's made more than 20 quilts since her diagnosis, and she has ideas for more in the works. Quilting has become an escape for her, she said, allowing her to focus on all the positive things she has in her life. 

"It's almost 13 years and I'm still fighting," she said.

Gallant started with a plan to make quilts for all her nine siblings, but that's since expanded to include many other relatives. 

"I love doing it because when you're dealing with what I'm dealing with, why worry about it? You can get depressed," she said. 

"I just can't sit in a chair, watch TV and sleep all day, because then I knew I'd go down. I'll give up. [So] I said to hell with this, I've got to keep on going."

Gallant's quilting now has quite a reputation in her community.

People often stop in to offer her fabric and materials. Sometimes she'll find bags of patches left at her doorstep.

She puts together the patterns and puts the finishing touches on with the help of her mother-in-law.

Since she started making the quilts, she's begun using the time during chemotherapy treatments to come up with new designs and ideas, often looking at photos of her family with their quilts.