I heard about the card table type and a friend of mine saw some beautiful ones featured on the TODAY show. She sent me the link to a fellow etsy seller:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/missprettypretty
I loved them immediately and noticed she even sold patterns, so that you could make/sew one yourself. I looked through her shop for days, when it occurred to me that even if I secure this to the wall, it will simply be another surface for Lucille to climb on or catapult herself onto something else. This was a sad realization, because it would have been fairly easy, inexpensive, and perfect for non-feral children, but could not stand up to our little monkey!
So I went back to the drawing board and decided to make my own with a roof that could not be climbed. A few days later, I was looking through Ana White’s marvelous blog (http://ana-white.com/) and saw a basic a-frame tent there. She had the plans for a tent with such a roof and used tab top curtains, keeping it quite simple.
I had to get to Home
Depot immediately to buy some wood! I needed to make adjustments to the
frame to make it safe for her but I got the basics from Ana’s plan:
http://ana-white.com/2011/06/easy-kids-tent-reading-nook. I then noticed
that someone had posted their “brag” picture of their own version. It
was very cute and they had also sewn a cover for it. I decided to do
something similar but needed to add a number of elements.
The tent is now spectacular! It stands at almost 6’ tall’ and is 38” deep and nearly 52” wide.
Here are some of the changes that I made to the original plan:
I loved them immediately and noticed she even sold patterns, so that you could make/sew one yourself. I looked through her shop for days, when it occurred to me that even if I secure this to the wall, it will simply be another surface for Lucille to climb on or catapult herself onto something else. This was a sad realization, because it would have been fairly easy, inexpensive, and perfect for non-feral children, but could not stand up to our little monkey!
So I went back to the drawing board and decided to make my own with a roof that could not be climbed. A few days later, I was looking through Ana White’s marvelous blog (http://ana-white.com/) and saw a basic a-frame tent there. She had the plans for a tent with such a roof and used tab top curtains, keeping it quite simple.
The tent is now spectacular! It stands at almost 6’ tall’ and is 38” deep and nearly 52” wide.
Here are some of the changes that I made to the original plan:
- Added a brace in the back that screws into the baseboards in two places.
- Bolted the top to the wall and secured the cross pieces.
- Adjusted the size of the board at the top (holding the cover).
Sewing the cover:
- Measured the sides and taped paper at the front to get the angle for the front and back.
- Used about 6 yards of the purple, 1 yard of the lavender organza, 2 yards of the print in the back (improvised), and ½ yard of the nylon mesh.
- Attached 12 straps (3 on each side) to attach the cover to the frame (much needed addition) with 2 smaller ties on the front.
- Used nylon mesh to create the skylights (Adorable).
- Glued velcro on the frame itself rather than attach to the cover.
- Finished every edge of the fabric because the main purple fabric had lots of fraying (In hindsight, I should’ve used a poly or something that wouldn’t fray).
- Stitched all seams and then top stitched for strength (which is why I used almost three rolls of thread!!)
- Released the seams in all four corners at the bottom about 4 inches, so it would hang well and allow the sides to wrap around to velcro.
It looks great and will hopefully stay in her room for awhile, although I may have gone a bit overboard with the skylights and transparent organza in the front. She isn’t too interested in it yet and I'm wondering if it's too open and doesn’t give her that closed-in feeling that she likes. I may need to cover the skylights or switch the organza with some fabric.
If anyone is interested I may throw a tutorial up here later.
