Knitting group created soldier out of poppies for Remembrance weekend

The group of 25 women knitted nearly 900 poppies to decorate the village and create the soldier whom they named “Jim”.

The women wanted to give people somewhere to sit and remember all of the lives that have been lost in wars over the years.

Ann Cooper started the group 13 years ago after she finished working and gathered the “lovely group of people” who became Knit and Natter.

They have also raised thousands of pounds for different charities since they started.

Remembrance tributes made by the group started to appear around Garswood in lockdown 2020 to “lift people up” and since then, Ann has wanted to keep doing more.

She said: “I want to do bigger and better every year”.

In order to top last year, she took to Facebook groups to ask if there were people outside of the knitting group who could knit some poppies to help them out.

The ladies meet at 10am on Tuesdays at Downall Green Independent Methodist church. For this project they did not just knit in the meet-ups they knitted at home as well. “One person knitted 600 poppies all by herself,” said Ann.

The people of Seneley Green were made up with “Sit a while and remember with Soldier Jim” and many took to social media to describe their work as “lovely”, “absolutely beautiful” and “a stunning tribute to our heroes”.

This is not the only display done by the group. There were hundreds of handmade poppies around the village, chains of poppies and a post box topper.

After all the poppies had been created, the whole group came together to assemble Soldier Jim before proudly displaying him, the decorated bench that he was sitting on and the sea of poppies that surrounded him at Garswood Road and Tithebarn Lane roundabout.

Ann said finishing the project was “Delightful and you really feel that you have achieved something” but the ladies do not have any time to rest as they are preparing to decorate Seneley Green for Christmas.