DIY TeePee - Pinterest Challenge #4

Late last week I decided on my pinterest challenge project - a DIY teepee for Max's new big boy room. I pinned it to my 'Max's Big Boy Room' board on Pinterest a while back and this was the perfect excuse to get my butt into gear and make it.

This project was so much fun!! It was fun to plan, fun to make and it's so much fun to watch Max play in it. I love it!
 

It took me a full day to make (with lots of 'help' from Max) and for the moment it's sitting in Max's nursery. It will move into his new room when I finish getting it ready for him.

Before I jump into how I made it, here's my inspiration pin... Gorgeous right! You can see why I was inspired to make one :)

(link)

The tutorial on this website is great & I pretty much followed it for the most part. I did make a few little changes and found that I needed to do a few things differently. Although that may have come down to my lack of sewing skills more than anything else! The good news is, even if you are a complete novice on the sewing machine (like me) you will be able to make this. It was really simple.

Max and I started out with a quick trip to Master's & Spotlight to get what we needed.

Supplies:

• 5 x 19mm dowel rods (180cm each) - $21.50
• 4mm rope,  1 meter - $2.75
• Queen size flat bed sheet - free 
• 3.5m of bias tape - $9.50
• Button - $1.90

Tools:

• Power Drill
• 5mm drill bit
• pencil
• tape measure
• sticky tape
• sandpaper
• sewing machine and thread
• sewing scissors

I'm not going to re-write the whole tutorial (head on over to My Poppet for that), I'm just going to give a bit of a run down of the process and note where I had to make any changes.

I started out by measuring and then drilling holes towards the top of each dowel. I used a 5mm drill bit and 4mm rope to make things a little easier for myself (the tutorial used 5mm for both), it probably didn't make a whole lot of difference, but it made sense to me! Oh and the holes did all line up, I just failed to line up the rods in any of the photos I took!

Max was really excited at this point. I'd shown him photos of the tee-pee on the computer and he was so happy that I was making one for him. He got out his own pencil and drill and 'helped' me drill the holes.

After I'd drilled all five holes I sanded down the rough edges and threaded through the rope.  I wrapped the rope around several times and then tied it off. Max and I took the frame into his room and set it up to see what it would look like. Max loved it!

With the easy part out of the way I took a break until it was time for Max's nap. I did try laying out the fabric and doing some measuring while he was still awake, but Max kept rolling around on the sheet and telling me that this would be his white tee-pee. Adorable, but not so easy to work with...

Once he was asleep I got back into it. I had a white sheet that I'd been hanging onto after the fitted sheet part of the set had been ripped. I decided to use it for now, but I might upgrade the fabric or stencil some kind of pattern onto it down the track. I haven't decided on the fabrics for Max's new room yet, so didn't want to spend money on something that might not work.

I gave the sheet a quick once over with the iron and then started measuring out my first panel. Seeing as all the panels were the same I only needed to measure out one, and then use that one as a template for the other 4 panels. It was here that I hit my first little (and I mean tiny) hurdle. The tutorial suggested that you cut out your panels according to this template:

Mine ended up looking more like this:

No biggie, but I did have a mini panic attack as I was cutting out the second panel and realised that I wouldn't fit all four in along the width of the sheet.

Once all the panels were cut out I started on the sewing. First up I sewed the binding and sweet little orange button & ties onto the door panel.

It was about here that I stopped taking photos. Once I got into the serious sewing side of things it took all my concentration not to sew my shirt to the tent.

I sewed each of the panels to the next one to create the tee-pee shape and then sewed in the tubes for the poles (go check out the tutorial to see what I'm talking about). After sewing the first tube I stopped to check if the pole would fit. It didn't and like the girls from the original post I needed to go back, unpick my seam and make mine a little wider. I ended up making each tube 1 1/4 inches rather than an inch.

I hemmed the whole thing up and then enlisted Sean's help to put the whole thing together. This was seriously the hardest part!! Even with the slightly bigger tubes it was still a tight fit to get each pole through the tube. Sean held the tee-pee frame upside down for me and I fitted the fabric tent to the frame.

After what seemed like forever it was finally done!! I set it up in Max's room and he was soooo thrilled with it. He climbed in and out of it and told me that he was a little bunny in his tee-pee. I'm not sure where the little bunny part came from, but it was cute so who was I to argue!

I did find that the sides of it were a little 'baggier' than I would have liked. If I end up using a new fabric I'll adjust the measurements to make up for this. If I don't change the fabric I might buy some new poles and drill the holes a little further up to make the base a little wider. I'm not to fazed though, I think it looks great and like I said before, Max loves it!

So there you have it, my diy tee-pee and it only took me a day!

Make sure you go and check out the projects that Katie, Sherry, Kate and Michelle have made. And make sure to check out all the other projects that have been linked up too. There are some seriously talented people out there in blog land!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Check out my previous pinterest challenge projects!