Having promised Bon-bon I would make it, spent 6 months negotiating the rights to make it and nearly 9 months (on and off whilst I works on the van) drawing and redrawing the patterns ;I am now ready to commence with this winter’s kite project. Last winter’s bears took 167 A3 sheets of paper taped together the patterns, this year’s project is substantially larger so I am going to get the patterns printed on continuous paper. Even overlaying all the patterns for the white fabric on one sheet the complete set comes in at 7 sheets 840mm x 5m. No thats not a typo, the sheets are ;five metres long, the finished inflatable was going to be 8m long but to make the pattern pieces narrow enough to fit them on 1.5m wide fabric I have had to drop it down from 8m to 6m.

I’ve found a couple of places on the net who claim on their websites that they can do long A0 up to at least 5m so tomorrow I put in requests for quotes. I’ve no doubt it will be alot more than the 1p per sheet I pay for the A3 but its the ease of not having to join together nearly 500 sheets of the stuff.

After the patterns the next issue is the fabric and I and torn between using the 56gsm fabric I have in stock for its strength or buying in some 48gsm from Europe for its lightness. I suppose I’ll have to sleep on it and make a decision once I have worked out how much fabric I will need in total.