Legend's wings (early design) - http://www.avians.net/~legend/wingquest.html

Scan of plan to make moving wings - http://community-2.webtv.net/OKpyramids/TheOmniKinetic/scrapbookFiles/mailedD17.jpg

Beth Scudder's page on making large collapsible faerie or dragon wings - http://www.geocities.com/bethscudder/sewing/wing_construction.htm

From: Jeff & Susan Stringer
Subject: [Costumers] How to Build Bird Wings

Hi! Cross post time again!

There is a question going on in the Halloween list that my Costumers may also be interested in, so I'll kill two bird wings with one cross post.

We currently have only one pic of the wings in question posted on our home page at;

http://web.archive.org/web/20010423120812/http://www.cdc.net/~stringer/Winners.htm

The Griffin Love dance is about half way down, and has a short description. If you don't want to wait on the whole page to load, go directly to the pic at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000910134037/http://www.cdc.net/~stringer/Griffins.jpg

I'll try to get some pics of the Angel wings scanned a put up a full page on How To page soon.

[Maintainer's note: The archive.org site is a bit flaky at times. If it doesn't load the page, wait maybe 5 minutes or try now and then. The actual Stringer homepage is nonexistent at the moment since cdc.net is gone. They will set it up again sometime, so for now, this will do.]

We looked up pictures of bird wings in nature books and selected a bird of prey as our model because we liked the short, blunt shape. Then we drew sketches of a man holding “ski poles” out ward and sketched in the general shape and estimated the size. Then we made a modified sleeve, which was basically a long oval with one blunt end, folded in half. If you look at a bird's flight feathers, you will notice that most of the soft flat part (whatever it's called) is only on one side of the quill. We decided to ignore the tuft on the upper edge. Each large wing feather was individually cut, 1/2 inch seam allowance was folded over and sewn down to make a case to hold a thin dowel rod, like the ridged quill of a feather and the fabric flap hanging from it made the soft part. (Pardon my lack of termininology before my morning coffee). The top “feather” on each side had a 1/2 inch piece of PVC inserted that could be held in the hand. We cut the PVC short enough to just hold it in the hand, but in retrospect, it would have been more comfortable if it had been longer. A longer rod could have braced under the wrist and been less painful to operate.

OK, We estimated how many Long ones, medium ones and short ones would be needed and started cutting and sewing the individual feathers. Ours were satin, which ravels, so we mixed water and white glue and painted it onto the raw edges at the bottoms of the feathers to keep it from raveling. Don't forget to put waxed paper under the wing panels if you try this, or they will be glued to the floor! Then, for stage use, we trimmed them in sequins. We laid out the oval for the sleeve section in the floor and arranged the “feathers” into the desired shape. Then I hand sewed all the feathers to ONE side of the modified sleeve. The other side of the sleeve was edged in velcro and the other side of the velcro was attached between the rod sleeves of the wing sections. This allowed us to “open” the wing section and remove the rods for moving them around. Each wing rod was marked J for Jeff or S for Susan then A, B, C, etc. for which feather it went into. You close up the wing, velcro the sleeve shut. The outer edges and a central section of the wings were strung together with fishing wire on the back side. That allows for wind to flow through the feathers on a “Back Stroke” and be solid on the down stroke. It takes a LOT of work and a LOT of fiddling with it to make it work, but the results are fantastic.

PS - I made up this method of wing construction all by my little self and used it for my Angel at World Con 1989 (??) in New Orleans, so no one can scream that I stole their design. If they saw my angel and copied it, you now know who got ripped off. But I don't believe in trade secrets, I believe in sharing information