Finally.....My Own Bell Tent Carpet

After robbing Mums 4m bell tent carpet for the last 4 months it was time to invest in my own.

I'm sure there is money to be made in bespoke bell tent carpets (imagine the colours, patterns etc) but at the minute there is only one on the market and its a crappy black (looks like every single hair and piece of thread would show up) so I followed suit of making my own.

Two weeks ago I grabbed myself a bargain on Ebay, well I did have a little bit of help.

I saw an Outwell Utah 6 carpet newly listed for 99p and seen as it was probably the biggest single piece I was going to find I got Mum to ring the seller and offer £40 for it - she's much better at conning people than me ;-)

Amazingly the seller accepted and two days later it arrived. Since then it has been sat in the living room waiting for me to complete the quilt and get round to sewing and cutting it to size.

I planned to cut the extra piece on the left in half vertically and then sew it underneath the remaining extra bit, making it more or less 4m square which would then be trimmed to the shape of the tent.

As it was nice and sunny after work today - after a week of torrential rain - I thought it was a good time to start.

I tried to lay it out in the living room to start cutting the section off but I really dont have enough room and didn't fancy trying to ram all that carpet through the sewing machine after the Mr Men quilt fiasco so I decided to go try figure it out outside.

Now I just had to ask the OH for help to take the tent and carpet outside so we could pitch it on the buildings communal garden (I say that loosely it's really just a patch of grass) and begin.

Errrrmmmmm, well no, he most definitely wasn't going to help. He said why dont you just measure 4m x 4m and the cut it into a circle in the living room - MEN!! That was not going to work, for a start the carpet wasn't that big and the bell isn't even really a circle and the room was no way going to be big enough, even with all the furniture pushed to the edges.

So off I trot downstairs on my own and begin pitching the tent.

At least I know I can do it on my own now :-)

As soon as it was up some of the residents came wandering over to inspect what I was doing. Most of the people who live in our building are quite old and I'm pretty sure they dont know who the Mr Men are.

One old lady asked if it was a child's play area - psssshhhh ;-) When I said 'errr no it's a tent but has Mr Men painted on it', she then proceeded to tell me about her time in the scouts as a child - grrrr leave me alone to get on with it!!!

Next came an elderly man, he wanted to know what I was doing 'No I'm not sleeping out here tonight, I'm just cutting a piece of carpet to fit the tent'. His reply 'carpet in a tent, well haven't times changed, when I was a boy........' Arrrrgggggg!!!! Why was everyone trying to tell me about their childhood.

The next, and thankfully last, distraction came from another elderly man. I was inside the tent trying to ram the carpet under the pole when I heard knocking. I went out and looked up three floors, where there was our jamaican neighbour who is usually very slow moving on his zimmer frame. Today he was bouncing up and down with his hands waving in the air and his thumbs up - at least somebody appreciated the tent, and he couldn't tell me about his childhood from up there so I could finally get round to doing the job :-)

After laying the carpet out it turned out I wouldn't have to sew anything - YAY!

All I needed to do was trim a couple of extra bits off from the front and back. Oh and the big extra piece on the left of the carpet.

It's really easy to cut and still looks neat with raw edges so I was soon done...

....and I have an extra piece I can use in the inner tent when I use that - £40 well spent.

Now I just had to haul it back upstairs and put it away - I would have slept out there if I didn't have the fear of hearing about more residents childhoods. 

As I had saved a lot of effort not having to sew the piece on the side and seeing as the offcuts were quite big, I made a piece for the entrance and a mat to put muddy shoes on. 

And because the sewing machine was already out and ready to use I made yet another canvas bag to put it all in :-)

Quite a productive Friday night I think!