Did you know that you can just. build a tent?

Like it’s more convenient to buy one already made, but if you’ve got a cool shape in mind you can order canvas or ripstop nylon and poles and just sew the dang thing yourself.

Classic designs are really simple (a wedge tent is pretty much just one folded piece of fabric with a front and a back sewn on, with the front slitted to make a door).

There’s a little more engineering involved depending on your goals but it’s all stuff you can figure out pretty easily, and if you need something up you can likely reuse the pieces as part of a later design.

The standard canvas to use is called “cotton duck”, and if you pay a bit extra you can even get it pre-treated with waterproofing. But if you don’t, you can also waterproof it yourself.

Common tent types include wall, wedge, bell, and pyramid, any of which can be made with only straight lines.

@akla_caps on Instagram

Does anyone have sewing recs/patterns/resources or discussion for specifically sewing your own cold-weather outdoor gear? I also posted this on Mastodon but the screwy state of search engines right now is making it tough for me to find cold-weather outdoor sewing (camping, hiking, winter road cycling, all that good stuff) aimed at heat retention and protection, versus general winter-themed makes. This isn’t my usual wheelhouse but it’s cold as balls here and I have a mighty need.

I’m leave for 2 weeks at the moment. It’s great, I have time to do this 👇🏻

The cuts are as rough as guts but that is ok. There are tools for that. The actual leather was hard to cut: it needed to be scored a few times and finished off with scissors. My poor scissors really need to be sharpened but it went fine.

As you may have worked out already, they are going to be a pair of leather thongs 🩴. 🩴 👈🏻 those type of thongs. The black is the top layer, beige is sandwiched and it will be soled with black rubber.

Lessons so far:

Invest in a good pair of leather shears.

Score in good light and invest in a magnifying glass.

Materials:

Veg-tanned scrap leather box from Lefler Leather in West Melbourne.

Rubber from Simon’s Leathercraft and Whip-making on eBay.

Next, to make the pattern for the thong part.

I need to make a new stuff bag for the hammock tho because this won’t work

I just absent mindedly looked at some random tuto and went okay lol, good thing I still have so much of that ripstop nylon so I can make a shorter and stouter one that fits nicely into the backpack

I really want to get into MYOG but damn those technical light weight fabrics are expensive

Nie mehr Sonnenbrille verlieren – und das ganz ohne Plastik-Kram aus dem Handel.
Wir zeigen euch, wie ihr euch aus Paracord ganz einfach ein eigenes Brillenband basteln könnt – individuell, robust und perfekt fürs nächste Abenteuer.

DIY-Guide folgt bald auf staywild-outdoor.com
#staywildoutdoor #paracorddiy #brillenband #outdoorgear #minimalgear #makeyourown #trekkinglife

DIY-BRILLENBAND AUS PARACORD – PRAKTISCH, INDIVIDUELL, SELBST GEMACHT

3 Einfache DIY Projekte für Outdoor-Liebhaber

Draußen unterwegs zu sein bedeutet Freiheit. Wer sich seine Ausrüstung selbst herstellt, geht noch einen Schritt weiter. DIY (Do It Yourself) oder MYOG (Make Your Own Gear) ist mehr als nur ein Trend. Es ist eine Haltung. In einer Welt voller vorgefertigter Lösungen bietet das Selbermachen eine Rückbesinnung auf das Wesentliche: Kreativität, Nachhaltigkeit und Individualität.

Ob Kocher aus alten…

3 Einfache DIY Projekte für Outdoor-Liebhaber

MY PACK MODS R DONE

not tested yet since i’m still injured. but the only thing that i can see having gone wrong is the sewn-down hipbelt, and i can unpick that if i have to

before:

Axe loops too small and not swappable
Front pocket opaque, not drying, and too tight
Hipbelt too mobile, hipbelt pockets too tight

After:

Front pocket giant mesh, MUCH larger volume, with outer bungee for compression and quick access of wet raingear

Swapped out all the axe loops, all are also replaceable now

Hipbelt no longer adjustable, it’s sewn into the position i always use for extra lift at the expense of hip mobility

Hipbelt pockets moved forwards to allow belt to be cinched down TIGHT on the sides (side buckle pictured, white line is old pocket edge). this also means the pockets are a little less slicked down to my sides and can better hold flat objects against my hip curve like phone, granola bars

everyone say happy 13th birthday to the love of my life. she is the greatest woman in the world and no I’m not taking notes

I’m thinking of getting back into cross stitch… I made this one a few years ago of my cat

It even has a bunch of her hair stuck in it just like literally everything else in my life :)

I was incredibly surprised, grateful and lucky to be gifted these two beautiful mugs for Christmas from Al Salam Glass and Pottery, handmade in Hebron, Palestine.

I’m not sure how they ended up in a regional town in Australia, and it’s such a little thing, but it’s a tangible conenction to a person and a people thousands of kilometres away who have my heart and deserve so much better.

Every time I see them, I’m thinking about Palestine. Every time I drink out of them, I’m thinking about Palestine. I’m going to treasure them forever and never stop calling for Palestine to be free.

i have recently become fixated on making the ultimate in modular lightweight outdoor insulation, the Exploded Puffy Jacket.

it’s a vest, a hat, and separate sleeves that idk snap on. you can wear just the hat on a cold night. you can wear just the sleeves when ur poncho is keeping ur core warm. you can wear just the vest, which is me mostly, i currently don’t even carry a puffy but i do carry a down hat and down vest. so really the sleeves are all i am missing. and sometimes if you have to take a long rest somewhere cold the sleeves would be nice.

essentially what this guy did, but i’d make it from scratch with lighter materials

i’m not concerned about air gaps in the armpits because if it is cold enough to wear the sleeves, it’s cold enough to wear your wind/rain layer on top and that will block drafts. for the same reason i might ditch a front zipper altogether and just leave it open or little velcro dots

fully succumbing to the Natural Gear brain rot…

A small supply of 900D Polyester fabric in NattyG pattern was one of my birthday gifts.

I’m definitely buying more of this stuff later - I was a bit worried how this material would feel given I haven’t had savory experiences with polyester-based cordura-like fabrics in the past, but this stuff seems actually good.

I don’t fully know what I’m going to make out of it, but I have a pretty good idea-

Though the thought of having to make all these patterns from scratch, hand measure them, and do a shitton of inverted seams sounds very not fun lol

I’m sure someone else has made a post about this, but for some reason it just clicked that Solas is talking about the Void specifically as being the place where spirits originate from, rather than the Fade.

The Void - as in the Abyss, the home (and prison?) of the Forgotten Ones, the place that drove Andruil mad and the place the Empty Ones preached was where the Blight came from.

A place deep under the earth but also simultaneously in the Fade, and potentially where Elgar'nan temporarily buried the sun.

The Chantry views it as “the antithesis of the Maker’s creation” but also, contradictingly:

Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls.
From these emerald waters doth life begin anew.
—Canticle of Andraste, 14:11

So this seems like more evidence for the “everyone was spirits” theory, but also raises more questions about them and connections with the Titans, Forgotten Ones and the Blight…

I swear to god… no matter how much you try to idiotproof surveys and forms you will always be thwarted by someone with the reading comprehension of a turnip

I know it’s probably not going to end up meaning anything, but I just went and took all these flycam shots because I realised that Xenon the Antiquarian seems to be visually quite similar to what we know of Ghilan'nain with all his excess limbs, mask-like face, and incomprehensible grey body.

We know he made a deal with an Antivan Witch of the Wilds to attain eternal life (but forgot to ask for eternal youth), but we don’t know what she got out of the deal. We also don’t know what he did to acquire all the excess limbs given he was originally a regular human noble from Kirkwall…

I don’t have any conclusions but it definitely made my brain go hmm

Ariège

A few days with friends where we sealed the last seams on our tent and got a first taste of the gr10.

there it is! first pitch. it is so cozy on the inside and it’s incredible to see all those cuts and seams and dongles and zippers come together and make a real tent. we need longer lines and more practice pitching it to make it sturdier against the wind. the cows were very intrigued.