Last week I knocked out a winter tarp and then had a chance to use it this weekend. I think I did a little better job photographically documenting the build process this time. So, here's what I did.
I used sil argon with Sunkmail's skinny modification of the DIY Gear winter tarp. It is a 135" ridge line and is 116" wide. I'm fortunate to have a decent size hardwood floor for drawing out the pattern, but with a tarp of this size I still had to do it in about 4 sections. I tried using painter's tape to hold it in place on the floor, but the material is so slick that the tape didn't really stick. I really like using a silver sharpie on this brown material. I've tried other darker colors in the past that were just too hard to see. For layout I have 18", 36" and 72" straight edges. For the cat cuts I rigged up a pole with some line to get the arch I was looking for and traced it out. I have a 2'x3' mat and rotary cutter that are a ton easier the scissors.
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I had planned on using the Necchi BF Mira that I recently acquired for the hemming, but it turns out it has some gremlins in the system. So I went with plan B, my Singer 201. The only problem with that is it was rather burred after the recent move. After half an hour of room rearranging we were up and running. I used a 1/4" double fold hemmer with the biggest problem being that I ran out of bottom thread 5 1/2" inches from finishing the job.
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For tie out reinforcement I used two 3" pieces of 7/8" grosgrain on the door and two 4" pieces on the main tie outs. Then I used a 4" piece of 1/2" grosgrain for the tie out itself. On the mains, I angled the reinforcing piece nest to the door at the end of the ridge line instead of following the edge of the tarp. All of the grosgrain is on the inside of the tarp.
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Now that I had the two halves of the tarp done, it was time to put them together. For this I used my Davis Vertical Feed treadle. The nice thing is that this machine has a needle feed. I used a paper clip thing to hold the material. When it got to the foot and would move it back to the edge of the table and repeat. Somehow the two halves of the tarp are about 3/4" different in length, not sure where I made the mistake that caused that. After sewing the halves together I went back and folded 7/8" grosgrain over the seam and ran two more lines of stitching. The biggest problem I had was when the thread would fall out of the slot in the arm the moves up and down. This would cause the loops on the back side to not be pulled tight, but the top stitch look fine. So some times I didn't notice until it had been going like that for a foot or two, at last it's easy to seam rip. I ended up fixing the problem with a piece of tape over the slot. I then went over to my Singer 403a. With that I folded the tails of grosgrain I had left on each end of the ridge line with a 1/2" Beastee Dee and bar tacked it.
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Next I moved onto an attempt at an internal pole mod. I did some math and figured I would need the tips of my 11' poles 6 3/8" in from each corner. So, I added another 4" piece of 7/8" grosgrain and then 1/2" grosgrain loops with 1/2" Beastee Dees. I had planned ahead and put two 3/8" pieces of grosgrain in the center of my ridge line for holding the center of the poles in place. I'm not sure if I didn't do my math right or if it's the ridge line set up, external vs internal, but I have a little bit of slack in the fabric about a foot either side of the ridge line with the poles in place. I am going to putting the ridge line under the tarp next time to see of that gives enough extra support to fix the issue. I had broadside winds gusting into the 20's one of the nights and, although that side of the tarp was push in, it never touched me. I took the poles out with it still staked out while packing up, and the side of the tarp was probably bowing in a foot more than with the poles in place.
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For the ridge line I have a Dutch hook harks headed to one end of the ridge line and a wasp on the other. I have 35' of lash-it with eyes spliced in each end. I run it through the dee's on each end around the tree and hooking onto the hook on one end and then tensioned with the wasp on the other. The tie outs are shock cord, line locks and zing-it with a eye on the end to hook to the stake. On one door on each end I have a Tato door hook on the shock cord that can hook onto a lash-it loop on the door itself.
I will be adding external pole mods in the near future. But, other than that, there is nothing that I've found yet that I would do differently for a future winter tarp. The weight without suspension is 14.5 oz. I have not weighted it with yet.
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