ok, so I’m pretty proud of my sewing skills…

A couple of summers ago we bought a used tent trailer we found on craigslist.  It has been fun to camp in, but needed a little help.  I recovered all the cushions with cute new fabric and still need to work on the curtains.  But what it really needed was help with the tent roofs.  The vinyl was brittle and discolored and CRACKED in a bazillion places.  Not so good in rain storms. (There were only 2 small cracks when we bought it, but they spread and multiplied with each use.)

tent sewing!

I looked into getting the vinyl/canvas replaced, but it was going to cost nearly $1000.  So, we held our breath, ordered some Temper Tent Vinyl tarps from none other than tarps.com and sewed in new roofs ourselves.

late night tent reapairs

My sewing machine wasn’t too excited about it, but we made it.  The tension was all wonky and I couldn’t ever get it perfect, but we weren’t going for pretty– just functional.  It was HUGE and HEAVY and really hard to maneuver.  I had to keep telling Barry, “We can do it!  We can do this.”  Of course the second one went better than the first.

Things I learned– use a walking foot, and a jeans 100/16 needle is better than a leather/vinyl needle.  We used bulldog and binder clips to hold everything together so we didn’t make holes with pins.  Not that pins would have ever gone through without getting all bent.

the seams aren't pretty, but they're good

We used a mix of new binding made from tarp scraps and the old original binding.  You can see that sometimes my tension was a little loopy, especially over the curves, but the seams are still strong and hold up to being stretched.  Phew!

putting it back together

We got it all put back together.

look- no cracks!

And look- no cracks!

a new tent roof

We’re headed up to the mountains today to use it.  Barry’s got the mother of all bike races tomorrow–

the Bailey Hundo.  100 miles on a MOUNTAIN bike.  Totally nuts, but totally awesome.

6 thoughts on “ok, so I’m pretty proud of my sewing skills…

  1. Yea! It looks so good! In two weeks, you won’t even remember the loopies on the binding and you will just enjoy it all! Good luck to Barry on his bike race!

  2. Wow, you should be proud of your sewing skills! I love it when I sew something “out of the ordinary”! My recent favorite sewing accomplishment is my baby carrier that you designed. It really is awesome. You did a great job of designing it. Thank you!

    Julie (The girl from Cascade;))

  3. WOW. Not many people would even attempt such a thing. Amazing :-)
    Hope Barry does good and gets another stump :-)

  4. It looks great! I am just amazed. I can hardly follow a tiny pattern and you have made and followed this huge pattern… a camper canvas tent. wow!

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