Woman 53 Covers Her House In Cascade Of 1 000 Home Made Poppies

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Fiona Hooper spent almost a year collecting bottles which she fashioned into poppies for the 12ft poppy display that covers the outside of her terraced house
A woman covered her entire house in 1,000 remembrance poppies that she made herself.
Fiona Hooper, 53, decorated her terraced house with a cascade of poppies made from bottles that reach from the ground to her first floor window.
The display is 12ft high and is made of bottle ends that she collected over a year.
Fiona, who works in an arts and craft shop, cut the ends of plastic bottles and painted them black and red and fashioned them into poppies.
After attaching them to wire, she created a sea of poppies that she draped over the front of her home.
Fiona, from Dorset, said: “Other people also collected for me and I even had a lady from Derby I met on holiday who sent me two boxes worth.
“There must be 1,000 bottles and I cut the bottoms out of them into flower shapes and painted them with acrylic paint.
“I bound them together with wire and when the 12ft display was complete I rolled it out of the first floor window and it worked perfectly.
“I’m thrilled with the result and the response has been amazing, with people from as far afield as America donating to my JustGiving page.”
She was inspired by the Tower of London poppies art installation in 2014, which consisted of 888,246 ceramic red poppies, each one representing a British or Colonial serviceman killed in the War, to create the display.
Remembrance Day has a special place in her heart as her dad was in the RAF, her grandfathers in the Navy, and her uncle was a Royal Marine.
Remembrance Day or Armistice Day falls every year on November 11 and is marked with a one or two-minute silence held at 11am.
It recognises the precise time that the first world-war ended in 1918, this being the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
In the UK, poppies are worn to commemorate the day, and wreaths are often placed on war memorials in ceremonies across the country.
The origin of this tradition lies in the opening lines of war poem In Flanders Fields by Canadian officer John McCrae, first published in December 1915: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row”.
The second weekend of the month, which is closest to November 11, is known as Remembrance Sunday.
On this day, the Armed Forces and their families from Britain and the Commonwealth as well as emergency services and any others who lost their lives due to conflict or terrorism are all remembered.

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