The Late Night Sewist

Hi!

While sewing for kids is not exactly my forte, I got really excited when I realized I could make them something else instead of clothes, something that will take them much longer to outgrow and something really unprecedented for myself as well.

So I made a house! Yes, it is technically a teepee tent, but boy, this is huge! 😀 I know it doesn´t look like that in the photos, but the diameter of the base pad is 120 cm and the height of the poles is 180 cm but since they are angled, the total height is about 160 cm.

If you want to try this at home, a few remarks: be smarter than me and pick a fabric that does not run in one direction. Because of the monkeys running one way, I used nearly 6 m of this and have lots of leftovers. Maybe even picking a different fabric for each side would be a fun idea? My main fabrics are from Abakhan and the heavy upholstery fabric for the poles and all the smaller details like ties, tie ends and trim is from Kangadzungel. My husband bought the poles and cut them to the correct length. I believe they are slightly narrower than suggested by the pattern and also not bamboo, just regular wooden sticks.

For the added trim and ties I used leftovers of some curtains in our house, so these small details plus a piece of boning for the window flap were the only parts that I can say I behaved economically. Otherwise, considering the amount of fabric, this teepee is definitely more expensive that what you can find as ready-made.

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Secondly, the pattern requires faux leather for the pole covers, but I would suggest fabric instead. You need to turn out the upper parts of the pole covers and I suspect it would be even harder with faux leather. It was really hard in my case as I used a heavy upholstery fabric, but the leather would stick to itself I imagine.

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I know there are people out there who can sew this up without any pattern whatsoever, but I am not that person. I prefer using a pattern and I chose Burda 6559 for the purpose. It is quite straightforward, but you need to pay attention when measuring for the pole covers. It took me a long time and some brainstorming to understand what is meant by lengthening the pattern to 148 cm as it says. It is really confusing what exactly is considered the beginning point of this measurement, so if you want to get away with it faster, I can tell you that you need to measure from the point of turning the pole covers inside out, mark 2. I would like to hear of anyone who figures this out solely from the instructions 😀

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Anyway, nothing much to say about it other than this really is the BIGGEST thing I have every made and this position will remain unchallenged for… maybe forever. Unfortunately our family policies on social media will not allow me to share the happy eyes of my daughter when she first entered the tent and peeped out of the side window for the first time. But that melted my heart 🙂

Until soon!