Making a Tarp

Make your own gear? Talk about it here!

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Ledburyjosh
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Making a Tarp

Post by Ledburyjosh »

Has anyone done this? I have 3mx1.5m of material.
I was going to just make a rectangle but after some googling it seems adding some cut out curves makes the tarp pitch nicer by eliminating saggy parts.
Is there any patterns or experience with this floating around?
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Bearbonesnorm
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Re: Making a Tarp

Post by Bearbonesnorm »

If it's your first tarp I really wouldn't bother trying a cat' cut.

1/ It generally involves adding a seam to a high stress area, so it needs to be well done (you might be a sewing wizard, I don't know) :wink:
2/ Cat cut tarps (or a shaped tarp of any type) will generally reduce the number of pitching options.

If I had 3m x 1,5m of decent material, I'd make something (as near to) 1.5m x 2.6m. A tie out in each corner, one on each short side, two on the long sides and one in the centre itself.

... and, a well pitched flat tarp doesn't have saggy parts :-bd
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whitestone
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Re: Making a Tarp

Post by whitestone »

I'm in the process of making a hammocking tarp.

With 3m x 1.5m you don't have much width to be working with. (I'm aware that materials tend to be max 1.5m wide because that's the standard width of things) So adding catenary cuts is going to eat into that - a typical cat-cut is somewhere around 1 in 20 to 1 in 12, that is for every 20cm along you have 1cm at the maximum depth so for 150cm that's 7.5cm at 1:20 or 12.5cm at 1:12. Quite a lot to lose! Catenary cuts are most beneficial on larger tarps, talking 4m x 4m sort of size where there's a lot of material to stretch.

If it's your first sewing project I'd stick with a rectangle. You'll need to add reinforcement patches at the corners and any other points where you want tie-outs and also double hem the edges. For the patches I'd cut about 500mm from the length of your material and cut them from that. 100mm diameter semi-circles and quarters will be large enough. You can either sew the patches on or glue them. You don't say what the material is so for glueing you would need the right glue to match the material.

For your tie-outs use a simple length of Grosgrain with a fold to make a V and sew the two legs to the reinforcement patches so there's a small loop to the outside of the edge of the tarp.

General sequence:

Cut and attach reinforcement patches
Sew hem
Add tie-outs
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lune ranger
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Re: Making a Tarp

Post by lune ranger »

whitestone wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 8:28 pm and also double hem the edges.
Not necessarily. I have a myog silnylon that was run through an overlocker to seal the edges. It doesn’t get an awful lot of use but the edges are still fine after 5 years.
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whitestone
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Re: Making a Tarp

Post by whitestone »

Well an overlocker would work but we can't be sure the OP has such a specialised (and expensive) bit of kit.
Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry
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