Throwing Shade

In all its glory...

Ginevra and I organize an annual bocce tournament at Northern Oaken War Maneuvers. In the past, we used a 10'x10' standard pop-up day shade that I lovingly painted with white nebuly (for Cleftlands) in the living room of my apartment. It served well for a number of years, but the paint used has begun to flake off and it was generally unappealing as a home base for something as auspicious as the Baroness' Bocce Tournament!

Fast forward to Red Dragon 2013 which hosted a day camp competition. I took a few pictures from the day of the setups that appealed the most and noticed that almost every picture was of (now) Mistress Genoveva von Lübeck setup and the simplicity of the canvas day shade and how great it looked.

Skip forward again and you land sometime in May of 2015. I've been working on the banner project for camp beautification at Pennsic and simply couldn't them all finished before NOWM where they were going to decorate the main pavilion. Whew! With that weight off my shoulder, I thought I could jam through another project on the back burner - a replacement day shade.

I had been speaking with Master Lorenzo Petrucci about his simple five pole day shade made out of a canvas tarp. Seemed simple enough, right? Five poles, some ropes, canvas and grommets. Easy! Except... I think even then I realized it probably wasn't what I want, especially knowing that there can be The Weather (TM) at NOWM, i.e. RAIN. I wish, nearly a year later, that I could remember the exact sequence of how it all came about, I just know it was all last minute.

Very. Last. Minute. (May 26, 2015 to be exact as I just confirmed my fabric order date!)

Mistress Genoveva posted Tutorial: Simple Canvas Dayshade for Events (with or without wings) on her blog at Honor Before Victory in June 2014. I had it on the radar for ages and the fire was lit.

• I order an industrial Singer sewing machine from Amazon. 
• I order 10 yards of 10.10 OZ (60") Sunforger® Tent Canvas - FIRE RETARDANT. 
• I call Panther to order a metal ridge sleeve and stakes.
• I call Panther back because I would like to order some dags so the day shade matches my tent.
• I call Panther AGAIN because I would like to order some of the colored braid.

Game on.

While I wait for the materials to arrive, Meinhard and I quickly build the infrastructure - four poles and the ridge pole. We created the four ropes out of 3/8" synthetic rope.  I think we applied stain and polyurethane stained them at NOWM. 

The final bits of material arrived by Tuesday, June 5 and that's when the chaos really began. I already have Wednesday through Friday off since that is the traditionally the start of event setup for the event, so I get right to work once the materials arrive.

I ordered 60" wide fabric so I wouldn't have to make as many flat felled seams, which in theory sounded amazing. In retrospect, I think I was unprepared for the bulk that would need to be rolled up and fit under the neck of the sewing machine. I attached the dag material from Panther on with a flat fell then used the black braid edging around the perimeter of the entire day shade. I measured out the locations for the reinforced fabric grommet patches and attached them. A final panicked call to Oliver Stillman for use of his behemoth grommet setter finished the project.

And then I go to NOWM on Thursday morning. (So this chaos all transpires in a 36 hour period.)

Why no in process pictures, you ask? Because I just didn't think about it with the time crunch! I ran in to a lot of sewing machine problems and the sheer weight of that much fabric pulling off the table. I could actually function and get some seams sewn when I called in help from Meinhard to simply support the weight so it would stop pulling on the needle.

TLDR> I made a day shade and it is awesome. :)

The new day shade at the almost-finished bocce list of Northern Oaken War Maneuvers.