The “canvas” tents of our bed-wings were in okay condition. There was minor mildew stains on the dingy interiors. They were also made entirely from cheap appearing vinyl in colors that clash with the rest of our new color scheme.
I really like the tent-like sleeping aspect of a hybrid camper, but visually (from the outside), they’re my least favorite component.
While not especially motivated to re-build them ourselves, we couldn’t find anyone to sew them in compatible colors, or with materials we specified. So we made them ourselves, patterning them directly off the disassembled vinyl canvas. There were minor adjustments compensating for stretching that had occurred. Sean did all the heavy-lifting, sewing the replacements from a light khaki palate. Our new Sailrite LSZ1 semi-industrial sewing machine handled the job effortlessly, and aside from a few requisite human-errors, they came together with no issues.
Attempting to make these canvas covers simultaneously more interesting and complementary, the new colors and additional details of rope and webbing reflect traditional canvas tents. I’ll detail our overall design direction in a future post which to elaborate.
We’ll have to wait until the spring to install and test their fit and show off the results. FIngers crossed they won’t need any adjustments!
