Off the back of a recent trip to Japan, I wanted to have a go at making a couple of Koinobori (Koi-shaped windsock). As well as looking pretty, I wanted to install something to scare the birds away from my cherry trees.
I was a little disappointed with the patterns I found online - all of the ones I found were of the 'very simple, double-panel' variety. I reckoned I could get a better shape from a 'triple-panel' design. I also wanted to build in a fin system that promoted a spinning body (which is hopefully more bird-scary).
I purchased a couple of metres of fish-scale-patterned fabric, and laser-cut a template out of MDF. You can download the template here. Note that in order to fit the whole template on a 400mm-square, only half-a-tail is included (flip it over to complete your tracing). Also note that the fin-shaped cut-out creates the fin template - you are not meant to cut that hole out of the body panel! You do need to cut a slit along the fin base, however.
I had enough excess fabric to extend the tail section beyond the template. The plan is to cut that excess into unhemmed strips that will flutter-and-fray in the wind. I can recommend paying attention to the orientation of your template onto your fabric to ensure that fabric pattern looks its best on the finished product.
Sewing it all together was pretty self-explanatory. I can recommend stitching the two halves of each fin to its body panel, before poking them through the slit to be joined (the second photo, below, shows each stage of that). Note that the fin-to-body seams bow outwards a little - this will create an opening for the wind to inflate the fins.
The eyes (download pattern) are each a stack of four circles - two white, and two black. The stack is joined together (and to the body panels) with heat-n-bond, backed-up with a run of stitching.
The hem at the mouth has a small opening to permit the insertion of a length of wire (e.g. old coat-hanger). The mouth harness is fishing-line-plus-a-fishing-swivel.
Pretty pleased with the final product!
All Koinobori Sewing Pattern assets by Chris Molloy are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
¤ Copyright 1999-2024 Chris Molloy ¤ All rights reserved ¤