Crafters take over postboxes with poignant Remembrance Day tributes
One woman spent more than 50 hours making a postbox topper tribute.
Crafters have commemorated Remembrance Day by adorning postboxes with poignant knitted and crocheted tributes which include planes, soldiers and poppies.
People from Yarn Bomb Hemel Hempstead – which has more than 900 members, 30 of whom are active – has put up roughly 35 toppers – both old and new – to pay their respects to those who served.
“The year before last we started doing toppers for regiments, so we have one topper which is the three paratroopers.
“My son was a Royal Marine for 10 years, so we’ve got one topper that has got the Royal Marines on it.
“One lady called Margaret felt that we had a lot of men represented so she made figures representing (groups including) the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), Women’s Royal Naval Service (WREN) and Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS).”
She said that for the Land Girls topper, someone attached a picture of their “nan”, who was a Land Girl.
She added many have left “lovely” comments about the toppers on social media and when they were being put out, people would stop and talk to the group and people in cars would stick their thumbs up.
They are eventually to sell the poppies to raise funds for the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal.
The 48-year-old who is an artist and mature student, currently studying for her computer science degree with the Open University, told PA: “My father Terry O’Donovan, aged 75, is an ex-service man who served in the RAF both overseas and in the UK.
“When we were younger, my brother and I were both RAF cadets and they are times that I remember with much fondness.”
Speaking about how she picked the design, she said: “I had chosen the Spitfire as an iconic symbol of the RAF and the sacrifices made by the members of their forces.
“It’s also my favourite plane and one that is uniquely recognisable.”
“I started by sketching the Spitfire, roughly to scale and working to make its wing shapes in a simple single crochet pattern, with increases added at the points necessary to create the shape I wanted,” she said.
She then used pipe cleaners to create landing gear.
The rest of the display was made from paper mache, which was formed and painted to resemble a cliff face.
“I crocheted chains in various thickness, textures and colours to create a coastline and rolling hill.
She also made crocheted poppies and used Fimo clay to create a different variation of the flower to form streams of poppies, which came from the plane to “symbolise the sacrifices made by our brave pilots during WWII”.
