mxa's blog

Now that the dome frame is all done, it is time for the next phase in the project: the cover. The plan is to sew a dome out of tent fabric, which will be suspended from the (91) vertices of the dome frame. This means that the tent fabric dome will have to be a little smaller than the frame; I decided to give it a 5.85 m diameter.

The tent will be composed of 15 segments of fabric: 3 layers of 5 segments each. The bottom layer's segments are the largest (16 triangles), the middle layer's are 12 triangles and the top layer's segments are only 4 triangles each.

To make measuring and drawing easier, I made five cardboard templates, one for each different type of triangle in the dome.

To lay out enough tent fabric to draw the segments, you need a lot of floor space. Thanks to bigmac for letting me use his (kids') playing loft, it was perfect!

Notice that the cardboard triangles have an extra purpose: you can sit on them while you move around on the tent fabric. This is a Good Idea, because you want to touch the fabric as little as necessary, to keep it clean and to prevent folds and creases while you measure and draw. The wooden beam was used to draw margins around the triangles, for the seams.

It took about 12 hours to get all the pieces measured, drawn and cut. Now I 'only' have to sew them together...