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How to Get up a Tent

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 15, 1871

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 38, No. 9.

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How to Get up a Tent.

By J. F. Carman

Go to your merchant and have him order your ducking; 8 oz. will do, 10 oz. is better; 10 oz. will cost 30 cents per yard, 8 oz. 25 cents per yard.
If you want your tent 16 feet wide (I think all tents should be that wide on account of making up two rows of beds), cut your cloth 23 feet and 4 inches long; 8 breadths will make it 19 feet long, making your tent 16x19, which will take 64 yards of cloth; that is about what will come in a bolt. You cannot get part of a bolt.
In making, lap the cloth to the blue thread, sewing with a darning needle, and cotton ball twine, well waxed. Sew with a whip stitch on each side. After sewing your breadths together, make a tack two inches wide on each side a little from the end of the cloth so as to give room to sew on your sides. In this tack where each breadth comes together, work a button-hole to receive your ropes. For the ends and sides get the heaviest factory cloth. Fifty-six yards will be enough for a tent of this size. In cutting the ends, cut your cloth on a square miter; that is, measure down the side of your cloth the distance your cloth is wide; make a mark, and cut from that mark to the corner; then cut off the long point at right angles with the bevel you have just made as much as you wish to lap your cloth at the door, which should be about one foot. Measure from the point you have left, down the cloth twelve feet, and tear it off. Measure from the square end of this piece along the short edge for the next, and cut it off on the same slant of the first. Take the long point of the cloth and measure from the short side of the piece that you have just cut, and tear off even, and you have one-fourth of the ends. In sewing these together, lap as before. In sewing the ends to the canvas, find the center of the canvas, and place the long point at it, letting it run by as far as you want it to lap. For the sides, cut your strips four feet long, sew them as the others; then sew them to the ends of the canvas, make a wide hem on the bottom. Work button-holes to hold them down.
Tent poles and stakes will be furnished free on the ground. J. F. CARMAN.