Attaching tent pole sleeves to the actual fly

"What I really want to do is to attach the sleeve to a solid piece of fly – not at the seam. Is this at all possible?"

Well it's possible – the question is whether the needle holes and stitches put too much stress on the canopy. I think so, but I'll leave it to engineers better qualified to judge.

Would link you to Roger Caffin's outstanding sleeve attachment diagrams, but they are incorporated into a seam, so are not what you are asking about.

I would love to see those anyway – I've seen many of his articles but not the diagrams you're talking about. Please link away!

It's much stronger if you put them in at the seams, and also doesn't introduce a weakness into the fabric.

You might want to try doing diagram "A" with the edges rolled inward, and doubling up the fabric in the stitched areas. This would protect the fabric edges, too.

Another thing you could do is do diagram "A" and run a strip of fabric on the inside (or outside) of the fly fabric, on the opposite side of sleeve. This way you'd reinforce the fly fabric and the seam of the sleeve, but it would be heavier.

I don't think Roger's diagrams are available at this time because of his commercial venture in producing his tents.

Option B looks like a good start, only orient the seam orthogonally.

I can't add a diagram but basically the seams and sleeve would make a cross shape with the fabric faces. You could then decide if you want to topstitch the inner loose seam flat for some added security. But I'm conjecturing/logicing a lot here.

I should probably add that Option B is also impossible (maybe I'm missing something so at the very least exceedingly difficult) to sew on a machine. The way I describe would eliminate those options. Miguel's suggestion for option A of rolling the seams inward instead of out also runs into the same issue. If there is a technique that lets you do this I'd be interested to know!

I too would like to see how Roger does it!

Option A can be sewn like this. Probably the simplest of the options.

Option B can be sewn with a sewing machine like this, but it would take up quite a lot of fabric and be quite heavy.

I’d like to see you actually sew option B over more than a few inches.

Yes, pole sleeves are usually placed at seams for two reasons. The first is that it is much easier to do it that way. The second is because fabric stretches, and the bits of fabric on either side of a pole need to be ‘shaped’ to handle this. It’s how you get nice taut fabric panels.

Macpac of New Zealand put the pole sleeve on the inside of the very highly rated Olympus tunnel tent – but it forms part of a full French seam. And the fabric is very ‘shaped’ at the seam, so the sleeve is almost unnecessary.

The seams for my tunnel tents are quite different from ‘industry standard’, which simply means that a lot of the industry goes along with whatever the Asian sewing company is used to doing. This is sometimes a good lesson in mediocrity. (Note that the orange tent does not have my current external poles: it was very early. The red tent has external poles.)

Cheers

I'd like to see you actually sew option B over more than a few inches.

It would be maddening! Especially with silnylon.

Thanks for everyone's responses and suggestions. I definitely agree that all forms of option B would probably lead me to curse the sewing and give up on myog forever.

Roger, it's a shame your diagrams are no longer available, but I'm extremely excited that your commercial venture is continuing. I will probably change the design to do the sleeves at the seams – what I might end up doing is experimenting on a small piece of fabric first to see what seems to work best, because I'm still not quite visualizing how it is attached even at the seam.