Tent Making Tips

TENT MAKING TIPS

(or all those things I had to screw up for myself before I could tell you how NOT to do them...)

Use office clamps to clamp, NOT PIN, your fabric together before you sew it.
Use the same office clamps to put an identifying tag on each piece as it is cut (Door flap, Roof side, etc...)
Don't let your cats run across your fabric! Tiny holes, nasty to fix.
Sew on your windows and windows coverings and vent before you sew the rest of the pieces together. It is much easier to sew them first, rather than haul all that material through the sewing machine to sew something back on.

The Anaconda method: Here's a little (bizarre) technique you probably won't find anywhere else, but we've found it very useful. After cutting the pieces the way you want them, take the tent outside and fanfold them (the long way)the two pieces you are going to be sewing together at a time- laid together as you would two more normal sized pieces of cloth, but stacking up the excess that lies off to the left so it's only about a foot wide. You now have a canvas anaconda/ Get as many of your friends as are available to hold this thing up at sewing machine height for you, letting go as they get to the sewing machine and picking it up again once it gets a bit past you/the sewer. This technique has really helped speed the whole process up for us. We don't end up wrestling with huge, heavy well, TENTS of fabric tangled in a mass dragging the sewing machine needle off sideways.--contributed by taylor@tellink.net Tchipakkan

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