Ever since I helped a friend put up her single pole pavilion, I have wanted one of my own. I currently own a 10'X10' square pavilion. It was the first tent I'd ever made and it has worn very well, but it takes an Army to put it up! There is a center pole and 12 side poles (one person I know referred to such tents as "pole farms"). When it is up it's very sturdy, but I'm tired the lengthy putting up, taking down and packing the enormous thing. My friends took 15 minutes to put up, and stores in a duffel bag. I want one.
Here's the mock up of the tent I will want, with a paper me next to the tent to give me an idea of the scale.
It took several things to fall into place for me to be able to make my new tent. The most important thing was to find fabric I could use. For my first tent I used sunforger canvas. It is a great water proof fabric and it wears for years and years. But I was worried about the weight. I want a tent I can set up by myself if necessary, and my shoulders do not take heavy lifting well. When I found lightweight tent material on Ebay I decided that it would be perfect for a large tent that I could set up on my own.
The next thing to do was to draw the plans on graph paper for a tent, I cut out a paper bed to see how much room I would have to get around. It is easy to overestimate how much room there will be until you are in the tent, and find that the bed you thought would fit, is a very tight squeeze and leaves very little room for storage or getting dressed. The blue rectangle is my bed, this size tent will give me plenty of room for my bed and whatever else I want to bring.
