The Dragon Kite

I'm not sure how many of you have been reading my blog long enough to remember the entire bolt of silk I purchases for $4.25 at the humane society's resale shop, but we still haven't used it all. Over Spring Break we made a fabric kite using some of it.

China silk is thin enough that I was able to place a coloring page under the fabric and trace it with a permanent marker, so that Blaze could have the dragon picture he wanted. I know we used to have more colors of silk paint, but all I could find were red and yellow. Blaze didn't seem to mind, though.







We used two thin dowels for the frame work, one was left its original size and one was cut down to 28 inches. Then I used some kite string to tie them together to form the base of our diamond-shaped kite. I also added a little dot of glue to the string, just to make sure everything stayed in place.



Notches were cut in both ends of each dowel using a pocket knife ( I did this, not Blaze), to hold the string, that formed the diamond, in place.



When the paint was dry, the fabric was sewn onto the string.

A long strip of plain silk became the tail, along with strips of fabric cut from this old piece of tie-dyed silk which was cut into strips to make bows.


The kite looks really good. Now we just have to wait until we have the right weather to fly it. So far, there has not been enough wind and tomorrow it's supposed to rain.