Last night I made my only sewing contribution – I made a drawstring bag to carry the kite in. 
Though the wind was somewhat too mild and somewhat erratic, I can confidently say now that the blue parafoil can fly!
I wasn’t confident to let out a lot of line. Until I get it tuned exactly, it has something of a tendency to over-correct – and sometimes go around in increasingly fast loops until it either crashes or loses its shape and flutters to the ground.
But flying. No doubt at all that it will be a heavy puller – when I didn’t have it tied to a bench, it could feel sort of scary even at low altitudes, pulling enough to be more than I’d want to handle i
n a bigger wind…
I’m going to see about getting a heap of (cheap) sewing machine bobbins, and try to develop a better ‘tuning system’, a way to easily lengthen and shorted specific towing lines. More to come!