I bought a big tie dye kit on sale when I was stocking up on summer craft supplies, and then I pinned some great projects on Pinterest. And one of them was this I Love to Create Tropical Twist Teepee. I knew I could sew the tent and get H to help me dye it, and then she’d have something really cool for her backyard play. And we had so much fun! I love how this turned out.

The tie dye kit was about $20, and we’ll get a few more projects out of it. We only used 6 of the 18 colors. The Butterick pattern was $7, and those Amazon Basics white sheets were the best deal. $6.35 for a queen set of sheets, I got 2 sets and still have a flat sheet, the pillowcases, and most of a fitted sheet left over for future projects.

H helped me pick up $15 worth of 1″ PVC pipes. I’m not great with a hand saw, so Adam cut the pipes down to size and drill the holes needed for us.

And I sewed up the whole tent in a day.

She couldn’t wait to dye this when I told her I’d finished sewing it. I was up till 3am that night, then I woke up and went back to work. We had to wash it first and dye it wet, and she kept checking the washing machine to see if it was ready. 

Then we “painted” the whole tent, and she loved it! I did the straight lines, she filled in the middle. We just did this on Friday, and there was a huge thunderstorm through most of the afternoon and evening. We got out at lunchtime and got this painted in the last sunshine before the storm. Then I wrapped it in that tarp and left it outside, I didn’t realize how much rain we would get. So some of the dye colors bled together before I ran out in the storm and brought the tarp back in the house for the dye to soak. We lost some of those great white spaces, which turned blue.

I hosed off the whole thing during a break in the storm, then washed and dried it.

We did a test run of the tent yesterday when my family was over for a cookout, but it wasn’t set up well. So I spray painted the poles last night, and I sewed some 11″ pockets inside the tent next to each pole casing, so I could put Ziploc bags of water in the pockets to weigh down the whole tent.

I love this frog print, I don’t know where it came from in my stash. But the pockets made a huge difference! Once I sprayed the poles, and tied them together properly, this tent was much easier to set up. And the water weights did the trick.

We set the tent up this morning, put one of her “Nana blankets” in it, and she set up camp with some toys. Snuggled up, hung out in there for a while. 

Even with the colors a little faded and bled from that rainstorm, I still love how this turned out! It was a great project that got the whole family involved, all three of us helped make this tent. And that’s such a cool thing for H to see and be a part of.

I think she’ll have some great summer afternoons in this tent, which is so easy to set up now. I’m really glad we found this project and got it made for this July 4th weekend.