A Christmas teepee

Yeehaw! I made a teepee! 😀

Well, I actually made it back in October, but now the big monster finally moved in. The reason why I hid it in the basement for two months is that I didn’t want it to experience the same cruel fate as his cardboard box house earlier this year. Even though I was really close to throwing it out a few times because it was battered so badly, I ended up keeping it until it literally fell apart. It was just so invaluable during those moments where I was cooking and just needed to know the monster was not climbing onto the dining table or living room shelves. And I also thought that the teepee would make for a great Christmas gift, especially to give us more inside playing options for the winter.

I got the fabric at Ikea. I wanted something stable and durable and was happy to find a selection of heavy quality fabrics there. While I don’t love most of their patterns, they also have a few nice solids, so I decided to combine white and dark grey. I chose a hexagonal shape, sewed wide white and grey fabric strips together as walls and cut windows in two of these walls and a long slot in another to be the door. For the dowels I added fabric tunnels along the sides and in order to add some color accents, I trimmed the edges with lime green bias tape.

Because I wanted the teepee to be as cosy as possible, it also got a floor mat that can be tied to the posts to also give the teepee a little more stability. And the monster was lucky: his new home comes fully furnished with a bunch of pilows. 🙂

So yesterday, we set up the teepee in our living room. The big monster didn’t try to climb through the windows as I expected… but through the gap between the wall and the floor mat and still almost managed to throw the whole thing over. Oh well…

This morning we finally succeeded in reading the first book together in there, sitting on the pillows. I hope this will become the main (peaceful!) use of the teepee and it will live a long and healthy life!

And exceptionally a picture of the proud builder… 😉