MORE than 800 poppies were hand crafted by members of the Miles community to be sent to the Australian War Memorial after Anzac Day.

It took four women from the Miles Respite group almost six months of hard work to carefully craft the beautiful poppies.

Respite assistant co-ordinator and Miles resident Adrienne McDonald said the idea came about after the Melbourne-based group 5000 Poppies put out a call to arms to all knitters last year to make 60,000 poppies as part of a special installation at the Australian War Memorial later this year.

"We saw an article in the paper talking about how the War Memorial was going to have a carpet of poppies to commemorate Remembrance Day so we thought we would try and do our bit by creating poppies,” she said.

"They were asking for people to crochet and knit poppies so we decided to try and do our little bit.”

Each poppy made will represent one Australian life lost in the first world war, as this year marks 100 years since the end of WWI.

There was another more personal reason for some members of the group to get involved, having had relatives who went to war.

"Two of our ladies husbands were in the war, World War II, and that was another reason to make the poppies,” Mrs McDonald said.

Making the poppies gave the women time to think back and reflect on Australia's involvement with the war effort.

"I think its been a wonderful activity, given us time to think about the war and people's sacrifices and what they went through.”