A little break from Kid’s Clothes Week, as today my Son turned 2 years old! The new fabric I ordered arrived for the shop and so I was ready to get going on making this Hideaway Play Tent, from Growing up Sew Liberated.
I was up late last night, trying to get the hideaway finished in time for Isaac’s birthday, but I gave up at 4am! I managed to squeeze in a bit more time before my parents arrived, but then I also had to finish off the birthday cake…
I will be the first to admit that I am terrible at cake decorating! I always seem to run out of time and lack the confidence to really make a decorated birthday cake. I made this ladybird cake for Lily’s first birthday, but nothing since! This year, I was determined to make her a special cake, but she demanded a “circle, chocolate cake”, which I delivered! I couldn’t really decide what to make for Isaac, the only thing he is really into is ducks… or “wack-wacks” as he insists on calling them. But there was no way my meager abilities could make a passable duck! So I started looking for typical boy type cakes, like dinosaurs! I was hoping to make some sort of body with half a circle cake and then use the remainder to make a head/legs/tail. I could just see it ending badly, did you see our hedgehog cake??! As luck would have it I came across some Renshaw ready-to-roll coloured icing in Hobbycraft, when I was picking up a few things yesterday, and it just so happens to be vegan! Yay! I then came across this site with great dragon and dinosaur masks, that looked like they might be fairly simple to cut out of icing and hey presto… here is the dragon cake! The cake itself is basically a vegan victoria sponge (2 x vanilla sponge sandwiched together with jam and frosting).
Where was I again? Oh yes… So after we had cake and presents, my folks decided to take the kiddies down the park to play for a bit, so that my husband could start chopping down trees in our garden, and I decided to finish off the hideaway! As you saw up the page, the front of the tent has 2 door flaps that can velcro out of the way, to keep it open. The back has a little round window, that can also be velcroed open!
The kids were back an hour or so later and really excited to find the tent in their playroom (I mentioned all the tree chopping in the garden, didn’t I?).
The kids grabbed the new dinosaurs (ready for more small world play!!!) and headed inside to check it out! The circle window is perfect for roaring dinos! 
The bamboo canes, I found at Homebase, were of a smaller diameter than the ones recommended in the book, so for now, we have just tied them up roughly with twine, instead of drilling holes through although it would make it a little more permanent and easy to put up an down! Hopefully we might be able to find some that are the right size soon.
The main fabric, that the tent is made out of, is Honeycomb Sun, from Birch Fabrics’ Home Decor Collection. This is actually a light weight canvas, but the only area it seemed to be an issue was with the circle window. I used a little bit of shirring elastic in the window to try and draw the window in a little bit. The cutout is a little flimsy and could probably have benefited from some interfacing and/or a double layer of the canvas. All the contrast fabric pieces (various different bindings/casings) are made from the Organic Cotton/Organic Linen Poplin, which is a perfect fabric for this sort of thing, as the Linen adds a little stiffness. I think it coordinated nicely! Another option, closer to the example tent in the book, is to make the tent out of the Poplin and use the Organic Canvas as the accent fabric.
I had to do a little jiggery pokery to get the panel pieces (they aren’t all cut with recommended direction of grain) all cut out of the Organic Canvas as it is 44″ wide, and the recommended fabric width in the book is 54″. It looks really nice and the kids immediately wanted to play in/with the hideaway. I am interested to see how it holds up during play, the fabrics should hold well, but it is quite lightweight, so they could easily knock it or lift it up. I don’t think this will be an issue outside, as you can always add a couple of guy ropes and peg it down. Hopefully we will get a chance to finish clearing the garden in the next day or so, and we can give it a try! I actually picked up some recycled (reclaimed) textile yarn, from hobbycraft, as it was on offer and I am hoping that Lily and I can weave a rainbow rug to have in the base of the hideaway. It should be a nice project to do anyway!
I will be back soon, with a free bag pattern and then with my last item for Kid’s Clothes Week, and a round up of some of my faves!