People from all across Manitoba are contributing to a heartfelt project in honour of Remembrance Day.
Tuesday evening at Garden City Shopping Centre, members of the 'Handmade Winnipeg' Facebook group were working hard to attach crotched, knitted and loomed poppies to a poppy blanket.
The 'Poppy Blanket Project' began in 2018 and its founder, Sheila Restall, said she got the idea from a similar tribute in England that she came across on Reddit.
It inspired her to post a call out to others to join her in making something similar here.
"And within an hour, I had a tonne of responses. Now, I have 7,000 poppies in my house," Restall said.
People from all across Manitoba -- and a few other provinces -- have been creating poppies by hand and either mailing them in or dropping them off to be incorporated into the blanket.
The hope is that the poppy blanket will be displayed in public places in the city for the month of November.
"We've come to a generation where not everybody is as familiar with it, it's not in everyone's presence as much as it used to be," Restall said. "So I wanted some way that people could really see it, really take it to heart and really take the moment to learn what our veterans did for us, what our fallen soldiers did for us," she said.
There will be more opportunities to participate -- the Poppy Blanket Project will be back at Garden City Shopping Centre Tuesday, Oct. 8 and the following three Tuesday evenings that month.
More information about how to get involved is available online.
