Ouled Naïl Bedouin Tent v2.1 The Other Tedious Stuff
I finished the 18ft of unravelling canvas. What a pain. My Fingers are numb. It will look awesome, but I highly encourage everyone to skip this step and just sew the canvas directly to the wooden hangers.
The tarp was big enough that I had no place to lay it out to mark were the straps go. Off I go to Ma & Pa’s to use there big back yard. There are a total of 15 straps that need to be sewn to the tarp. The 8 smallest straps will be sewn on the top side of the tarp, and the remaining 7 will be sewn to the underside. If you look close at the picture you can see where the rough placement of the straps will be attached. The underside straps are off center front to back by one panel as the front wall will be pushed up during the day, making a interesting profile on the roof. I also at this point wish I had made the long straps at least 1.5ft longer. I have them really chocked short on the back to give a cooler looking front strap look. Leland added for scale.
The small side wall straps are sewn as to leave ~1ft hanging wall underneath the strap. They are positioned at the tarp seams. This is another reason I cut the panels into ~3ft sections rather than the original fabric 6ft width. This will be a high stress point on the tent, and the seam helps with the pulling stress.
The longer side straps were sewn at ~30″ at the outer edge of the strap. When the front wall is pushed up during the day, you will be able to see that unsewn strap section pulled taunt.
The center strap sewing lines all chalked out. I found it was easier to just measure the centerline, and then with a taped ruler mark out the edges than to just try to chalk the edge lines.
The only way to get this to sew on my machine is to carefully roll the outside edges towards to center chalk lines. Duct tape would have worked better than the masking/painters tape. It would have eliminated the tape breakage while man handling the beast around. It did the job, just long enough to sew the strap.
I sewed one edge down, then turned the whole tarp around to sew the other side. I could only manage a couple of inches at a time, as I was always stopping to stretch the fabric out so there was not excess fabric being sewn into the band. Once both long seams are sewn, you can go back and sew across the ends.
Next time: wooden hangers, and enough rope to hang a man.
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