My first proper homemade gear item, and the start of my MYOG journey. I made this in early 2023 to use on my 3 month journey across Southern England- Chalk & Salt
I did an evening sewing course to learn how to use a sewing machine then made a couple of small items to get some confidence before attempting the tarp.
Spent a good while thinking about the design. When you start out and don’t have that much experience its easy to get overwhelmed by the number of different considerations: Size, materials, details etc. Luckily there are a plenty of tarp builds online you can refer to. I found this account very useful:
https://andrewsleigh.com/making/myog-tarp/
I wanted a wider coverage than my chosen material, so settled on a design which had a sewn ridgeline. Added a slighly catenary to the ridge as i was expecting to pitch it in an A-Frame configuration most of the time. It was very shallow so you could stil pitch it flat without too much trouble. Also added some shallow catenary cuts to the outer edges.
I purchased most of the materials from Point North Fabrics
-Ripstop Nylon with a PU Coating ~80gsm
-Polypropylene webbing for the tie outs
-4mm Shock cord for the edge tie outs
-4mm paracord for the ridge tie outs
-4mm linelocks for adjusting the tie outs
-Gear aid seam grip to seal stitching
-Guterman Tera 60 thread.
The actually making process took a couple of days, using a fairly standard domestic sewing machine. Probably the hardest part was working with such large pieces of fabric. Marking and cutting was tricky and had to move furniture around to get enough space to do. The sewing was pretty basic. Some pretty waving sewing and some difficulty when going through the webbing for the tie outs. Set the tarp up outside on a dry day and used Seam grim to seal the stitching.
I’d never done the tarp + Bivvy combo when i set out, so there was a bit of a learning process. The tarp worked really well, and kept my dry through some pretty stormy nights. The flexibility of the tarp is a big advantage, rigged it up to trees and rocks as well as using it with just trekking poles. I was worried I’d feel exposed, but I found being able to see out actually made me feel safer. It also meant that I was able to see some amazing sights and animals at dusk and dawn.
Towards the end of my chalk and salt route i was using it as a makeshift backpack cover when it was caught on a barbed wire fence and a big gash was ripped into it. Made an emergency repair with a needle + thread, then sewed a patch over it when i had access to a sewing machine.
