Sewing Show & Tell....Thread

1.1 oz silpoly.

And not right away. I rarely end up in rainstorms so I plan to test how bad it will leak with a hose. If it's bad, I'll rip the seam and add in a flap at a later time.

 

Ahh cool, that works, the water would probably just run down the zipper on the inside anyways, and being an open bottom shelter you'll have more to worry about than a wet zipper lol.

 

Tipi is going to be a hot minute. Decided to order coyote tan cordura for my tie outs. Going to go ahead and order the zipper cover while I am at it. I am struggling to find a source for a thick aluminum or carbon fiber pole that would hold this shelter up. Plenty of smaller shelters, but my 4 man pole would bend if extended. Seek outside and kifaru sell them for a pretty penny. Surely there is a cheaper way...

School starts back on Monday and I'll be busy for the first two weeks. Going to try to finish it 100% for the field season at my new job in May.

 

School has been keeping me busy but I have been slowly working on the tipi. It hasn't hit me how big this is until now. My dog is sitting in the middle of one side. I am sewing 3 sides together tonight. I still need to finish the 4th side with the zipper. After that it should be relatively quick to finish. I have the reinforcement patches and tie outs cut already.

 

Finished (95%) working on these curtains for the topper last week using a sash rod and supplied hardware on the window frames. There is a 1.5" rod pocket and 7/8" header. A portion of the rod pocket is cut out on the window side (not shown) to accept the rod holder. Still need to decide whether to use Velcro, magnets, or cord to hold the bottom back rather than drape away from the window into the bed. This was cut from a single blackout curtain bought for ~$9 and ~$7 for hardware.

 

Awesome skills up in here! Thanks for showing me the thread OP!

I'll be asking for advice and pointers. Looking forward to sharing some of my half ass work!

 

I post my half ass work all the time . Hopefully I'll have my half ass tipi done soon. I found out I'll be working as a fish biologist in Idaho now so I'll have a week after graduation to finish it up...and the plenty of wilderness areas to test it out.

 

Where at in Idaho? You could get your pilots license and be one of those dudes who stocks the mountain lakes with fish, that'd be a BA job.

 

I'll be working in the Clearwater county .

 

Oh sick! I just drove almost through it last week, went through on 12, that's an awesome area, and Clearwater especially cause it's pretty remote.

 

Super stoked about it. I have only drove through Idaho once and I was asleep for the whole trip. When I started looking for jobs I realized I have been in Utah, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Wyoming...but somehow never made it to Idaho. I'll be living in Grangeville, so you were pretty close to me. After looking at the map it looks like Ill be in both clearwater and idaho county. Regardless...big fish .

 

Been waiting 7 weeks for a new embroidery machine to come in. I did a test run on it Monday. Going back tomorrow for further testing with hats.

While I was there I spotted a

$819 Juki DDL 8700 Industrial Straight Stitch Sewing Machine

Juki DDL 8700 with a table in excellent condition. Has been gone through and works perfect. I have another embroidery machine sitting in the box at the house. It may get traded in on the 8700. He told me that was just a straight stitch machine and he had another one in the store in Atlanta that does a lot more for the same price.

Also though I saw a Merrow machine sitting in the corner but it was a hidden stitch machine instead. Got all excited for nothing.

I need to stay out of there after I get this embroidery machine.

 

I wish we had a decent shop around here. I had a lot of questions when buying my first machine and the only shop in town was for quilting. Nice ladies, but they had no idea about the fabric or items I wanted to make . But then again...I probably saved a lot of money by not having a shop to talk me into bigger and better machines.

 

Really as far as fabric went Hancock's had the best stuff. There are a few independent fabric places that sell stuff cheap but hard to find exactly what you want in them. We have a quilt shop that I went in when I was looking for my first embroidery machine. They sold Huskyvarna machines. She showed me a Diamond Deluxe. I said that looks nice, how much? She said $6k. I said I don't think I need that much machine so she showed me the Ruby something. It was $2800. I asked her if they had something more like a cubic zirconia? she was not impressed. I said I think I may be in the wrong shop and left. lol

I have been back and bought a few things like fabric, bag patterns and a pair of ragging shears to try a quilt.

Where I'm at now $6k sounds like a really good deal compared to the ones I'm using.

I found this place out of pure luck when the other local shop pissed me off working on my big machine. They sell big quantity and for half the price of other shops. They cater more towards the commercial and industrial level of people with supplies but also sell some home type stuff also. They take the time to listen to you and will help you out if you need help. The owner is the one that usually helps me. The guy is a freaking plethora of info. I met a guy in there one day that embroiders car seats. I started picking his brain about is there really that much business in custom embroidered car seats. He said the cheapest interior he has done was $10k.

I can take something in to them and they will take me to the shelf and show me what I need to make something with. If they sold fabric they would be the ultimate goldmine in one stop.

Monday I got to watch one of the Brother direct to garment printers in action. That thing is freaking huge!!! I see now why they cost so much. The damn thing printed the left chest logo on a shirt in less than 8 seconds. You take it out and set the ink with a heat press. Chick was pumping out 2 shirts a min because the heat press was holding her back having to set the ink for 30 seconds.

The first time I walked in the store I was thinking there was no way they could stock the 75k items they said they have in stock at this location. They aren't kidding and I bet they have more than that now. Now I only do business with them.

 

What did you and @Overlanerd decide to use for materials for your tents? I've looked into materials for my topper and awnings and playing with the idea of doing a RTT but I couldn't find anything I liked that was similar to what traditional RTTs are using (a midweight poly/cot). Also just looking into it a little bit again, on the low end Geo uses 260gsm fabric while Eeziawn uses a 420gsm fabric (7.7oz and 12.4oz respectively). A lot of them are using hokey denier poly fabrics too that seem to only be available from China, which makes sense if the quality is there.

 

We're using 18oz rubber coated nylon. Same thing used for truck tarps and RTT covers.

I looked into heavy synthetics, but Phil was a proponent of the heavy stuff. I'm now convinced it's the way to go. It's only about 15lbs for a 36' wrap and that's nothing for a car, backpacking is another story.

 

Wow dang, that's really heavy stuff. It won't wear or let any water through, that's for sure! The one question I have is condensation, do you have any thoughts on keeping moisture out? Granted it was a fairly different use, my first topper didn't have any ventilation and it was a lot smaller of a volume, but because it was tonneau cover material it had a lot of condensation and it would rain on you in the morning I haven't yet gotten to sleep under the new topper on a moist summer day but the fabric is supposedly breathable so I'm really hoping to keep condensation at bay (I'll also have screened windows for ventilation which should help a ton)

 

So you plan on making an RTT? It sounds like a future sweat box with those materials! Where are the progress pics going to be at?

 

We both have tons of ventilation. On the roof we have fantastic fans that can move air in and out, or just open for airflow.

We skipped on breathable fabric because we both plan on running heaters in the fall and winter and the breathable fabrics would help the heat escape.

This is all still really a huge prototype, but right now we think it's the best approach. I looked at everything from Gortex to silicon stuff but durability it key.

The fun part about the material, besides an excuse to buy a heavy duty machine, is that it's weldable. So I'm going to learn what goes into that.

 

Sort of an RTT. Here's where some of it starts.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/iggys-1-taco.368214/page-21#post-14282995