Great Malvern Floral Festival Yarnbomb

Earlier this year, Yarnbomb Great Malvern was invited to take part in the Great Malvern Floral Festival.  The theme for the window dressing competition was 'Once Upon a Time' which was a great kick start to our ideas.  Sue had the brilliant idea to make a life size fairytale princess with a dress festooned with crocheted and knitted flowers.  After a lot of planning and many many hours crocheting and knitting, the princess had been constructed by Sue, and was ready to be decorated.  By this point she had evolved to become Maybelle, the may Queen.  We had invited people to make crocheted and knitted flowers to be included in the dress and used to decorate the surrounding railings and were very pleased to see how many had been donated.  The flowers were applied to the dress and she was ready to be installed in pride of place on Belle Vue Island in Great Malvern.

On Thursday 1st May, Sue, Christine, Lois, Jo and Jo's husband John gathered on the island to put the installation in place.  It took several hours but finally the railings were decorated with garlands and wreaths of knitted and crocheted flowers, and the May Queen was in place.

Another idea that we had during the planning stages was for a certain number of flowers which people could take away with them.  Sue created a tree in a pot which we then decorated with individual flowers with tags saying 'Take Me'.  This was placed near the May Queen so people could take a flower to remind them of the Yarnbomb.

The following day, Sue Christine and Jo gathered again, this time in the grounds of Malvern Priory to create the May Queen's Secret Garden.  There were lots of little details for people to spot - fairies, toadstools, a frog prince, flowers of course, and even little bees and a birds nest in the tree.

We had so many lovely comments from people who had seen Maybelle the May Queen and her Secret Garden and people who loved the Take Me Tree.  It was wonderful to hear how much people enjoyed our display.  It was also great to have so many people involved with the project - thank you all!  We had many people say they were sad to see it all come down on the 13th, but that they were excited to see what we would be doing next.