Tipi

[Adam Thibault]

Saving the best for last, silnylon tipi…
It's an octagonal pyramid design that I designed to be 12' in diameter and 7.5' tall. Although final dimensions turned out to be 11'4" in diameter and 7' tall, not sure what happened there! Sewed with 1" flat felled vertical seams and a 1" hem along the bottom. The vertical seams are 109 1/8" long have a 1.5" cat deflection. I cut the panels so one edge is selvage and one edge is bias and then matched selvage to bias when I sewed it. It was a royal pain sewing because the bias edge wanted to stretch so I had to use an insane number of pins to make sure everything lined up at the end. The zipper is a #5 coil with two pulls.
The peak reinforcement and tie out reinforcements are cordura.
The zipper termination is a little funky. If I did it again I would run the zipper almost all the way to the peak (about 5" short) and then use a strip of silnylon to finish the zipper and the seam allowance all the way to the peak. Then I could just incorporate the silnylon strip in to the flat felled seam at the top. Might be a little confusing, here's a picture of how I did this to terminate the zipper on my bivy…
The stove jack is from Bear Paw, I sewed it in with velcro so I can take it out and replace it with silnylon if the stove isn't needed.

The pole is one of these…http://www.campmor.com/outdoor/gear/Product___21540…I think I need to find something different because its ridiculously heavy and awkward to carry.
Here's my list of lessons learned I kept while sewing this thing…
Maybe sew the panels like MLD Supermid panels so each edge would be on the bias cut, I think if the cuts of the edges matches it would be easier to sew and the ridgelines would look cleaner too.
1” seam allowance on all seams may not be necessary, ¾” may be perfect although 1” is easier to deal with
1.5” deflection on the ridges seems perfect
Iron the seams when doing flat felled seams. It makes sewing them way easier.
When pinning the ridge lines pin perpendicular to the seam first to make sure the material doesn’t stretch. Then pin parallel to the seam.
Cordura tie outs is probably way overkill, could probably go with silnylon tieouts or Dynema may be best
Be sure to install the dual zipper pulls the right way, this thread will help: http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=21702
Sew tie-outs to the underside of the tent not on the outside
Big thanks to Kevin and Angie from SeekOutside who let me swing by their house, check out their tipis, pick their brains on this project. Lastly, thanks to Jerry Adams and the other people that provided the much needed insight into how to make this thing on a forum thread a couple months ago.

[Jerry Adams]

Nice job!

Top of zipper funky – I know what you mean. What I will do next time, is run the zipper all the way to the top, and cover the top of the zipper with the peak reinforcement.

I've done Cordura reinforcement at peak, seems unnecesarily heavy, my last tent I just used the same silnylon I made the tent out of. The only problem is where the pole is against the fabric on the inside – I'm afraid it will abrade the fabric – but you have all the flat felled seams of the side panels so there are many thicknesses of fabric. But, your tent is bigger so maybe the Cordura is called for, it's such a small piece it doesn't weigh anything so may as well use the Cordura.

[Gerry Volpe]

That is very cool/

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