Tarptent making over Christmas (Anna)

A sketch made in Sketch up.

During this years Christmas, while visiting my mother, I have finally taking up my tent project again. It has been berried three years now and I was surprised to find it all most ready and also on how well I seem to have made it. Why I didn’t finish it back then is something I don’t remember, maybe I lost my believes in succeed in my project. At the moment I have high believes that it will work out just fine.

The only reason I did not finish it now was that I missed out some things to construct the fastening device at the back of the tent. When this is ready I will test to set up the tent in the field. I need to have it up to do the last decisions about how to solve the closing of the opening in the front.

The tent is a variation of Henry Shires tarptent and I have used some of his original pattern and instructions but I adjust it a bit:
www.tarptent.com/projects/tarpdesign.html

It is actually not so difficult to make your own tent, but it can be a bit tricky to handle all this huge amount of fabric which also is very slippery. You will need some space, I am happy that my mother is a tailor so she has a big room and a big cutting table that I can use.

It is also good if you have the possibility to set up the tent inside while testing as when it still not ready it is also quite fragile so even a breath of wind can make damages.

The fabric I choose to use is a very light sil nylon bought from www.extremtextil.de , (I cant really recall the weight but I think it was something like 60-80 gr). As mosquito net I used a fabric that you can buy at IKEA called SARITA. I used this as I have found other peoples recommendations to use this fabric, it is very light and cheap :) For the floor I used a little more strong fabric than the sil nylon. I bought it from www.shelby.fi

The goal is that my tent will have a weight of 1 kilo with the sticks.

I have got many nice tips from many different sites on the internet by people sharing their experiences in making their own tents, Among those is www.andersj.se and also the forum on the Swedish site: utsidan.se

I will soon post some images of my tent project and also try to make a closer description on how I made it.