SHEEPY TEEPEE: HOW TO MAKE A $30 TEEPEE IN 90 MINUTES

Dear Olive,

The kids are presently fighting over a stuffed sheep that they call "lambie"  One of them will procure it from the other and then run to the teepee to hide.

Do you still want to make a teepee?  It took about 2 hours and $30.   Much better than the $199 they have been going for online.

Here's how to do it:

We purchased our rods from the hardware store.  They are wooden and square.  Lowes even cut down the rods for us, since I am presently sawless.  The fabric I chose was indoor outdoor striped fabric.  I am going to go on record as saying that we had one of the first black and white striped teepees.  Now I see them everywhere.

Basically, the teepee is just a square with four triangles sewn to the base.  The only thing that I sewed was the base and hemming around the opening flaps.  I added another fabric under the flaps for stability.

All of the other teepee tutorials I read made you measure and sew pole pockets.  Ugh... terrible.  A staple gun is my weapon of choice here.  It actually makes the tent more stable anyway.  Just fold over the fabric and staple it to the poles.

After stapling all of the poles, just pull up the teepee.  I folded the top of the triangles inward and added elastic around the top to keep the poles together.

The teepee is one of my favorite kid projects.  It acts as our toy bin.  At the end of the day, we basically just shovel all of the toys into it.  Sheep included.