The project The Longest Yarn opened at the NAS Wildwood Aviation Museum on April 13, 2025, paying tribute to the June 6, 1944 liberation of Normandy, widely known as D-Day.
This 80-meter-long hand-knitted and crocheted 3-D display of World War II depicts scenes of the eighty days between the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris, crafted eighty years after D-Day took place.
This tribute collection of dioramas honors the soldiers that took part in this significant historical event. The title plays on the name of The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan’s 1959 film about the Normandy invasion.
The Longest Yarn has its origins in France. Tansy Forster, a Brit living in Normandy, had a vision of memorializing this time period and event, which she had been honoring for years because her uncle was killed in the war, and found many creative participants to help bring it to life.
Creator Tansy Foster to the left, Mark Kulkowitz to the right
Mark Kulkowitz, son of WW2 Veteran Harry Kulkowitz and a U.S. Army veteran himself, was a driving force behind bringing this project to Cape May. Mark spoke to Cape May Magazine last year and said, “We have to understand. This was a war that was worth fighting. This was literally a fight for humanity. And it is a rare time when our country truly came together as a single force with a clear purpose, even though many soldiers had little to no knowledge of the places they’d be fighting. This is for my grandparents. It’s for my family, and of course my father. But it’s for our country too. We were united. We need to continue to tell this story.”
This knitted three-dimensional tapestry consists of eighty 1-meter panels portraying different historically accurate scenes from the war. Volunteers all over the world have contributed to creating these panels, from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, to right here in Cape May, and more.
The display is currently located at NAS Wildwood Aviation Museum, 500 Forrestal Road in Rio Grande, as the first stop on its tour. You can visit this remarkable demonstration from 10am-4pm daily until September 1st. Learn more about how to support their mission on The Longest Yarn’s website.
