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After acquiring a Dragonfly made by Go-Fly-A-Kite recently Karen decided she wanted to make something in a similar style, whilst browsing the 'Penguin book of Kites' by David Pelham she came across the outline plan on the right and decided she wanted to use it.

The first job was to find a butterfly that would fit the pattern, and after scouring various bits of clip art and such she found the picture on the left which fitted the basic shape she wanted,so she printed it out in black and white and put a grid over it so she could transfer the dimensions to a large roll of paper to make a template for the cloth.

The ripstop was then sewn together to give the sail you see on the right, its wingspan is just over a metre wide.

So you need some materials for a frame, what do you do? You go to a kite festival and buy some! So Taking the kite sail we had already, we went to sutton in ashfield kite festival and after having sought advice and tried various type of Glassfibre and carbon fibre rods we made our purchases.

Karen used 2.5 mm diameter glassfibre rod for the bottom wings which went into a V shape connector which was drilled through so it would fit onto the 5.5mm spine. The top wings are held rigid by 3mm carbon rod which just go straight down the spine to the bottom pocket which holds the spine.

One thing we have realised is that the butterfly wont hold its shape like the dragonfly does, so Karen is going to use the bridle lines attached to the wings to prevent the wings being swept back too far.