My Air Force daughter brought home the greater part of a parachute last week for me to play with. It is made out of 1.1 ripstop, and while there were a few small holes, and about 1/4 of it missing, it looked to be in good condition for building some hammock stuff.

So this weekend, up through tonight, my seamstress wife and I converted about 1/3 of it into a hammock sock, roughly using Just Jeff's instructions. Started off by removing all of the para cord that is sewed into the hammock from top to bottom, 19 of them in the section I had. Then we took it out and stretched it out over my BB ridgeline, with the top of the hammock (the skinny part) at the foot. With the UW in place, I crawled into the hammock and my assistant pinned it up every foot or so, making sure that it did not compress the UQ nor have too much sag. This was a surprisingly difficult operation, mostly because a parachute is not a flat piece of material. We ended up pinning and sewing the foot half and checked it for fit, and then just laid the section of the parachute we were using out on the floor and pinned the head end to be the same size as the mid point. Checked it for fit again and then sewed it up. Added drawstrings at head and foot and called it good for now. Need to try it out before determining the need for a door.

The old parachute was kind of motley green and gray and actually looks pretty good, and stuffs down to the size of a large grapefruit. I will rig it this weekend at our Seattle area get together and get some pictures. It was all in all a pretty interesting project.