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    Kites for Everyone: How to Make and Fly Them
    Kites for Everyone: How to Make and Fly Them
    Kites for Everyone: How to Make and Fly Them
    Ebook215 pages1 hour

    Kites for Everyone: How to Make and Fly Them

    By Margaret Greger

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    About this ebook

    "The most influential kitemaker you never heard of." — American Kite. This thorough guide by an expert kitemaker includes easy-to-follow, illustrated instructions for creating and flying more than fifty kites. An easy and comprehensive introduction for anyone interested in these amazing flyers, the book opens with the history and science of kites, followed by a section on kite construction and flying. Organized according to kite types, Greger's book includes chapters on everything from simple bag kites to Vietnamese, Snake, Dutch, Dragon, Bullet, Delta, and Flowform flyers. She even tells how to make windsocks and toy parachutes!
    The book is a great aid for classroom teachers, camp counselors, and parents, offering practical suggestions on everything from setting up a workspace and observing safety rules to launching the kites and bringing them in. "Kites for Everyone is like having a veteran kite maker in the classroom," says Science and Children.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9780486318004
    Kites for Everyone: How to Make and Fly Them

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      Book preview

      Kites for Everyone - Margaret Greger

      KITES

      For Everyone

      How to Make and Fly Them

      MARGARET GREGER

      Diagrams by
      DEL GREGER

      Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, New York

      Acknowledgements

      In a book such as this it is always difficult to give due credit. I am indebted to many generous kitemakers. The dedication in my first book, Blown Sky-High, was to kitemakers, past and present, who have shared their work so generously … all the way back to unknown Oriental kitemakers. All of us who make kites are aware of the many hands that preceded ours. Throughout the book I mention various kite designers in connection with the kites which they developed. The list includes Guy Aydlett, A. van Breda, Leonard Conover, Tony Cyphert, Ed Grauel, Gary Hinze, Bill Lee, Joseph Lee, John Loy, Carol Master, Joan Newcomb, Stephen Robinson, Francis Rogallo, Scott Spencer, John Spendlove, Steve Sutton, and Lee Toy.

      My own work would not have been possible without the pupils and the teachers in the various schools where, over a period of twenty years, I learned to be the Kite Lady. These include the children and teachers of the Richland, Washington, School District and of Educational Service District 123; the children, board, and staff of Chief Joseph Summer Seminars, Wallowa County, Oregon; and Jack and Frances Ehrig of Locust Grove Press, who printed my earlier books.

      Angela Dittmar, Bob Ingraham, Tom Sisson, Bill Tyrrell, Jack Van Gilder, and Vi and Elmo Weeks are also among those who helped. Vi Weeks and Debora Greger read the manuscript. Vi made several of the fabric kites, vetting the patterns. Many hands have worked on the drawings including Joan Newcomb, Pierr Morgan, and Hel. Debora, and Greg Greger.

      Debora oversaw this third edition, and it would not have happened without her. Kelly Barber of Gainesville, Florida, brought her formatting and typesetting skills to the task of putting it all together.

      Copyright

      Copyright © 2000 by Margaret Greger

      All rights reserved.

      Bibliographical Note

         This Dover edition, first published in 2006, is a slightly corrected republication of the third edition of Kites for Everyone, originally published by the author in Richland, Washington, in 2000. The Resources section has been updated for this edition.

      International Standard Book Number

      ISBN-13: 978-0-486-45295-1

      ISBN-10: 0-486-45295-6

      Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

      45295602

      www.doverpublications.com

      Today

      I saw the Kitemaker

      Testing the results

      Of her handiwork,

      Tossing

      Them out one by one

      Into the winds

      Of the future,

      Tethered

      Only by the fragile

      Strings of her love

      To the world she knows.

      Tomorrow

      She will give

      Into the hands of others

      Kites bearing her mark

      Wondering

      Will they fly,

      Or be flown,

      Steady or storm-whipped, Hoping

      The colors of earth,

      Buoyant and beautiful,

      Will enhance the sky.

      —Virginia Horton

      Contents

      Introduction

      Classroom Kites

      Wind Scale

      Flying, Bridles, Lines, Knots, Reels

      Fabric Kites

      Kite Directory

      Kites to Make

      Vietnamese Kites

      Vietnamese Kite

      Vietnamese Bag Kite

      Snake Kites

      Siamese Snake Kite

      Bag Snake Kite

      Plastic Snake Kite

      Fabric Snake Kite

      Paper Kites

      Paper Kites

      Dutch Kite

      Paper Dragon Kite

      Sled Kites

      Sled Kites

      Kite Safety

      Trashbag Sled Kite

      Mini-Sled Kite

      Stapled Sled Kite

      Fabric Hornbeam Sled Kite

      Bookmark Sled Kite

      Bullet Kites

      Mini Bullet Kite

      Plastic Bullet Kite

      Fabric Bullet Kite

      Square Kites

      Whole Bag Kite

      Plastic Fantasmo Kite

      Fabric Square Kite and Diamond Kites

      Eddy Kites

      Eddy Kites

      Conover Eddy Kite

      Traditional Eddy Kite

      Lee Toy's Eddy Kite

      Delta Kites

      Delta Kites

      Little Delta Kite

      One-Piece Delta Kite

      Tony Cyphert's Delta Kite

      Joseph Lee Delta Bird Kite

      Harper's Ferry Delta Kite

      Zephyr Delta Kite

      Box Kites

      Trashbag Box Kite

      Mini Winged Box Kite

      Fabric Box Kites

      French Military Kite

      Winged Square Box Kite

      Corner and Facet Kites

      Single-Cell Comer Kite

      Two-Cell Comer Kite

      Facet Kites, General

      Four-sided Facet Kite

      Five-sided Facet Kite

      Flow Form Kites

      Flow Form Kite

      Flow Form Kite Instructions

      Kite Tails, Bags, and Windsocks

      Tails

      Kite Bags

      Streamer Windsock

      Ribbon Windsock

      Fabric Windsock

      Parachute

      Resources

      Resources: Books, Magazines, Materials

      Index

      Introduction

      Kites for Everyone—a running start for beginning kitemakers, with, thanks to generous kite designers, such beauties as the Facet and the Flowform to challenge the experienced. When I wrote Blown Sky-High: Kites for the Classroom, in 1977, my first aim was to bring all my notes, patterns and lists between covers in a convenient form for my kitemaking classes and workshops. Sooner or later, almost every kitemaker is invited to help a class, a Cub Scout den, or a Sunday School group make kites, and Blown Sky-High was welcomed. I had already overseen the production of thousands of classroom kites, and the book was based on the solid experience that falling into all possible pitfalls gives. It was reviewed in library journals and school arts magazines and was soon in libraries and schools all over the country. Kite shops came to rely on it as the answer to Can you show me how to make kites with my fourth grade class?

      In 1979, More Simple Kites combined some new favorites with kites which came to me from people who had used Blown Sky-High and who wrote, Would you like to see the kite I make in my daughter's pre-school class?

      Simple Fabric Kites, 1982, was written to make kitemaking accessible to competent home sewers. For the most part, the available instructions for cloth kites had been written by kitemakers who were inventing sewing as they went along. My contribution was translating kitemaking into standard sewing terms and simplifying and sequencing the sewing steps.

      Kites For Everyone, 1984, combined these three books with much new material. By 1990, I had found still other great kites, enough for a second book, More Kites For Everyone, with 17 more kites which ranged from simple to challenging.

      Now it's 2000 and time to revise Kites For Everyone before I reprint. The old classics remain but, in the interim, new materials which simplify kitemaking have come along and more kite favorites have joined the crowd.

      Using This Book

      Kites For Everyone is organized according to kite types, a chapter for deltas, one for sleds, and so on. In a single chapter, the kites will range from a 15-minute bag kite costing about 25 £ to a fabric kite which may take several hours to construct at a cost of several dollars. This organization emphasizes the diversity possible with a single design, and kitemakers, who know well that one thing leads to another, will appreciate the range of options.

      In the way we talk about kites, and in the way prizes are distributed at kite contests, it may seem that fabric kites are considered in some sense better and plastic and paper kites inferior. Simplicity and low cost do not imply inferiority. My own preference is for the 15-minute wonder, and, in this collection, I am particularly proud of the classroom kites, many of which use a plastic or high-density polyethylene bag as a module. Kitemakers should look at a shopping bag as Michelangelo looked at a block of marble.

      I built my first kite, a two-stick diamond, of willow poles and brown wrapping paper, over sixty years ago. There was not much to read about kites in Western Nebraska in the thirties, and our materials were also limited, sticks split from orange crates, kraft paper from mail order packages. My husband built his first two stick kites to fly frame forward, and learned what was wrong only when he saw a store-bought kite. Today's kitemakers can begin with good patterns and materials and have a broad range of kite designs to choose from.

      Various options for bridle, tails and other finishing details are shown for each kite design. Available materials, prevailing winds and personal preference determine choices. Most kitemakers come to have a favorite kite design, generally one which does well in the local winds. But we all like to try something new, even if it only reaffirms our loyalties. In a sense, the patterns are like a standard recipe. With the correct proportions of yeast, flour and liquid, and an understanding of the principles, you can make almost any kind of bread.

      Classroom Kites

      Since 1969, I have been teaching kitemaking and kiteflying in elementary and secondary classrooms, in college classes, in summer camps, and in workshops for adults and families. The workshops are a short kite course in which several kites are built, using various materials and construction methods, thus giving the students experience with different designs and techniques. Kites provide inexpensive, exciting leads into many areas-art, crafts, engineering, math and even history, since the development of kites is traced in both East and West. They are also simply fun an activity to be shared by all ages. They are for poets, inventors and all of us who like to hold our work in our hands and watch it take off into the sky.

      How do I feel about Charlie Brown and his kite? About his chronic, predestined failure to fly a kite? I don't like it, that's how. Kites should be a symbol not of failure but of soaring, spirit-freeing success. I've overseen the making of a few thousand kites in my career as a teacher of kitemaking. There was one, a Siamese Snake not that carefully made, which I could not get to fly-and that on a day

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