Lakota tribes built their tipis using 17 poles! Three were lashed together to form a tripod with the third pointing east as the door pole. Then, the remainder were placed in a spiral like fashion with four on either side of the east pole and three in the back. The cover is set in place with a lift pole and there are two additional flap poles. I didn’t research any of this prior to building my tipi. I hastily searched for a no-sew tepee that I liked and ended up using this tutorial.  I had planned on a “Where the Wild Things Are” themed first birthday party for Jude and decided I just had to have a teepee for it. I read plenty of the comments on this blog post and determined enough people had success following the tutorial that I would follow her directions. I ran into some roadblocks during this craft and decided to share my thoughts on what I learned.

Firstly, I order my drop cloth from Amazon. Tip for you!- Amazon does not always have the best prices. I later found drop cloths at Home Depot for less money and I bet theirs were the correct dimensions! This is in her blog, but wash it PRIOR to cutting and assembling because there will likely be shrinkage. My canvas was advertised as 12′ long, but ended up being over a foot short. I tried to compensate for this in a really unsuccessful way, so here’s my next tip- DO compensate for the length of POLES after your canvas has been washed and shrunk. I’m not sure how the height of the poles worked for an actual 12 foot long canvas, but they did NOT need to be nearly this long. They could easily be a foot shorter and have plenty of extra poking out the top. I also liked her tutorial because I loved the idea of using couplings on the PVC pipe to make it much easier to store. After building, I would have made the lengths closer to the same size. There is really no reason the bottom segment needs to be so much longer than the top. I have reassembled this tepee several times and the contact paper has ripped and torn, so also be prepared for that. There is ZERO need for the caps in the bottom. It is a super huge pain to try and fit the poles into these pieces. Leaving them as open pockets for the legs to fit into would have worked worlds better. Finally, I would suggest using five poles rather than 6. It is really tricky to get them to cooperate. The less poles the better!

I decided to dress up my tipi using bunting I made from left over scrap fabric and some ribbons. My son and my cat loved playing in it!