Sea Star

I attended the Fort Worden Kitemakers Conference in March 2002, including a workshop taught by Rolf and Claudia Zimmermann. They are well known for their marine themed soft kites and line laundry. In this class they showed us how to build a small (approx 4 foot) sea star line laundry object.

Construction was a bit finicky, as there were a lot of parts with small radius curved seams. It was a good exercise for my sewing skills. One of the participants completed the project in about 5 hours - but I later discovered he was a professional kite builder. Everybody else needed about 10 hours. It was quite a challenge to complete in a 1 day class.

Due to the relatively small size the sea star does not need much internal rigging: just a single line connecting the centers of the front and back panel. In addition, reinforcing line is sewn along the top edge seams where the bridle lines connect. The Zimmermanns fly the scaled up version as a soft kite; bridling for the soft kite version is a lot more complex and the air intakes are also slightly different.

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