As far as tales of lost luggage go, Sarah Mulrooney's is one that tugs at the heartstrings.

The Saint John woman travelled by Pal Airlines from Moncton to St. John's on Feb. 20, bringing with her an unfinished sewing project she'd been working on for the past six months.

It was a lap-sized quilt bearing several rows of sailboats, each made with a variety of "fun," nautical-print fabrics.

"It's intended for a friend of mine who welcomed her first baby in November," said Mulrooney.

"I started it back in the summer, and I just finished the quilt top in January," she said.

She planned to have it quilted using a technique called stippling while she was back in her home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where she knew someone who could do the type of ocean wave stitch pattern she had in mind.

She was going to surprise her friend with it when she got back to New Brunswick after completing a pharmacy training placement.

The quilt was packed in a piece of checked baggage, said Mulrooney, but her bag did not arrive with her, and she hasn't seen it since.

The airline has been actively looking for it, said Mulrooney.

"They've been good to deal with, but we're just not really having any luck."

CBC News left a voice message with Pal Airlines, but did not receive a reply by publication time.

The "theory" is that it may have been loaded onto another carrier's aircraft, said Mulrooney. "But we really don't know which carrier or where it ended up."

A frequent traveller, Mulrooney is used to dealing with flight delays and cancellations and has had lost luggage before, but until now it's always shown up within a couple of days.

At first, she thought this was just another bit of "bad luck" that would make for a good adventure story.

Three weeks later, she's no longer laughing.

Mulrooney said she put a lot of hours and a lot of love into the quilt and would dearly like to get it back.

"I'm still holding out hope that it's going to turn up."

"It's out there somewhere," she said. "It didn't disappear into thin air."

Wherever it is, it has not been logged into the "world tracer system," she said — describing a system used by multiple airlines to report and locate lost and found items.

"They've been checking every day in that system and no results have come up," said Mulrooney. "Honestly, it could be anywhere."

Mulrooney and her friends have been calling airports everywhere east of Ontario to see if it's been found. But flights leave Moncton for many destinations, she said.

"It's really hard to know."

It seems like this kind of thing has become more common, said Mulrooney. "There's been so many stories lately of bags that fall through the cracks and somehow don't get logged in the system."

She thinks it's possible her lost bag will be deemed unclaimed and end up being donated to a charity, and the quilt top could eventually show up in a thrift store.

She's appealing to anyone who comes across it to reach out to her through Facebook where she goes by the name Sarah Lillian.