Sewing a tarp
Getting into light gear you will realize that a lot of gear is overpriced, or you might want specific features the commercial products don’t offer.
But in my case I’m simply one of these DIY people, and I sewed a silnylon tarp.
Material:
As material I used silnylon, because it is cheap and does the job. I would prefer cuben….but the price 
Cut:
Hiking alone I don’t need a big tarp, but I want a luxury size. I already own a 3x4m tarp which is simply too big. 2,5×3 is also too big. I decided to cut the foot part half the size of the head part. The following image shows the final draft I used:
The draft includes the seem allowance. This was transferred on a sheet of paper and then cut out of the silnylon.
Cutting:
One note on this: Cut the diagonal sides very straight or your tarp will sack and be difficult to pitch.
Sewing silnylon:
This is the difficult part. To make it easy for you: USE NEEDLES. I stichted my seams with needles every 5-10cm, otherwise my sewing machine will not transport the material correctly and I will have a lot of mess. The lap seem is quite easy, I used the tutorial from http://www.flusslinie.de
On the tieouts I used 3 layers of silnylon to secure the straps, this is bomb proof.
Result:
Thinks I will do differently the next time:
- create a pocket at each tieout to store the line when packing the tarp away. I will use one of the extra layer of material for this.
- make the tieouts very short and use lines instead.
