Upcycled Food Tent Hammock

Upcycling / Repurpose / Reuse

I trust everyone had a great holiday with loved ones despite the challenges of COVID19. I wanted to start the year off with a tutorial about recycling materials to make new and useful things.

I always try to salvage items that otherwise would be discarded, however this can lead to some unwanted hoarding for sure and that is the point of this post.

Just like the The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, and know when to walk away. Somethings are not worth keeping and taking up space.

So recently I have been wanting to go camping and so I started to pull out all the old camping gear I had stored for years in the attic. When my son was younger we used to go camping all the time since he was a Scout.

As I take things out, somethings are in great shape and others not so much. That led me to shop online to start replacing the damaged things. Naturally camping equipment has changed through the years and items are now new and improved so I purchased what I needed, and reused some items I couldn't save.

Food Tent Hammock

My Food Tent was in bad shape, granted it got the most use when we would go on trips and the netting was damaged but the top was still good. So I decided to make a personal backpack hammock out of it.

I started to remove and keep the guy line / ropes since those will be reused later in the project. and I carefully started taking the tent apart. The tent had a small banding that served as the tent's trim and protected the stitching underneath. This trim will be saved for further projects I have in mind since they are used in many camping items.

Once that was removed and stored for other projects I started removing the top part of the tent's stitching. It was tedious and took some time however I did use the time to listen to my new favorite podcast Legends of the Old West.

I found that it was easier and time conserving if I cut the thread every 4 inches or so and then pulled out the stitch with a small metal file I had handy.

Once all the materials where separated I can now use the materials I harvested from my old food tent. I should have taken measurements of the tent to better inform whoever is reading but I can say that when it is folded in half the long way it is roughly 7' X 5'.

As mentioned now that I have the materials harvested I can move on to sewing. I made sure to close the fold and add a hem on the long side of the material. Then I worked on the top and bottom hems. Granted the stitches were ugly but I was going for strength and the project was just outside of my sewing machine's capabilities. It would skip a few stitches here and there but I made up for it by adding more stitches.

I plan to make another hammock where I will sew up the material properly but keep in mind that this is just a upcycle project for me so I do not mind the "glitches". Once complete I moved on to the salvaged guy lines.

I looped the guy lines four times in the pocket I created on the top of the hammock then I tied a knot in the middle on the outside of the pocket. Then began to loop around the four lines to add support to what will become the top of the hammock's tie with the excess guy line left over. This process was repeated on the bottom of the hammock and the project was complete.

I then braved the task of testing what I have built and it when well, I now watch the sunset from the comfort of my backyard hammock. Listed are all the photos I took for the project, thank you for reading along and I wish you luck if you ever attempt the same!