hollie hobbie's tent

A quick project for a little friend inspired by Weekend Sewing-

The fabric screams 70's childhood, doesn't it? My friend, Kim, got this fabric when she inherited her grandmother's stash. Sadly, my hopes of getting her addicted to sewing have been dashed - for now.

Our girls were playing together a few weeks back and we got to talking about some of the large plastic toys we can't wait to purge. I'd recently found that Ellie and Trixie no longer want to play with the plastic playhouse behemoth that took up a lot of yard space. We found another family to love it and I promised something fun to replace it. What I had in mind were some fabric tents that would only take up space when they felt like playing with them.

Kim and I thought the same tactic might work with Tess, so I took some fabric home and got to work. This piece wasn't large enough to do the pattern as called for in Weekend Sewing (which is designed to accomodate a napping adult), but it worked just fine to house two preschoolers.

The modifications were simple and this easy version took about 20 minutes. I think the piece of yardage measured almost three yards long. I double folded hems on the raw edges and tucked 6 folded pieces of twill tape for loops into those seams - one at each corner and one in the middle of each seam. 2 more folded pieces of twill were placed in the center of the fabrics selvage edges. Those are the ones that have the twine attached to them to create the tent. The others were staked into the ground with wire hangers. I snipped the sides off with wire cutters (the part that already has a nice bend it) so that the prong lengths were even. Just slip them into the twill tape loop and push into the ground. The hardest part is finding spots that are the right height to anchor the twine. I think we'll be putting an eye hook into the side of the garage for the one I have in the works for Ellie and Trixie. I need to get busy on that because this one went home with Tess.