Appledore giant knitted Christmas tree appears at church

A giant 14.5ft (4.5m) knitted Christmas tree has appeared in a seaside town.

About 100 people helped to make the display over six months in Appledore, north Devon, organisers said.

The Mega Yarn Bomb Christmas Extravaganza also includes a Christmas Eve fireside scene with lights.

The project was inspired by a similar creation in New Zealand, and started to bring the local community together after coronavirus severely impacted Christmas 2020, organisers said.

The display was revealed at St Mary's Church Hall in the village on Sunday.

A spokesperson for the project said: "With a cancelled Christmas for most of last year, and uncertainly about this year's Christmas, it was a way of keeping all the village involved as a community through Covid, and during the summer when the village was inundated with tourists."

The knitted and crocheted tree has been made from more than 1,000 highly-decorated 7.5-inch (19cm) long squares.

Next to it is a Christmas Eve fireside scene with fireplace, chair, Christmas stockings, a sleeping cat, pom-pom robins, mistletoe and fairy lights.

Volunteers were needed to sew all the squares together and fix them on backing wires, plus a construction team to make metal frames.

Most of the work was done in people's homes but also in working groups in the local Baptist church.

Jennie and Ian Lamb headed the team, along with Terry Bailey, who made the Appledore Angel and the Appledore Millennium Beacon.

Time and nearly all of the materials were donated by villagers, with the final construction cost partly funded by the Appledore Visitors Association and Northam Town Council's Welcome Back fund, organisers said.

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