Thread: How to cover canopies?

Tweet

So.. for my home haunt I use two 10' x 20' canopies end to end. Because of the change in daylight savings time I covered
them last year in black plastic. It turned out to be one whopping pain in the a**!!! Most of
our setup time was dealing with freakin' blowing plastic.

Question is, does anyone have a better idea? I don't want to use the standard blue or green poly-tarps because they
let in too much light and I really want it dark. I've looked into heavy canvas but it costs an arm and a leg. I also need
the ends covered as well (again, the light thing).

Anyone else use canopies and have some good ideas? Help!

One year we spray painted the canopies flat black to tone down the white.

It requires sewing mainly...I've got to figure this one out too for a different reason. I bought one to use as my booth at certain reenactments or renaissance faires, and some shows require a cloth cover over the plastic.
Spread the top out, and look at how its made....if you get some cheap black fabric, you can do rough traceouts of the pieces its made up of....leave some extra for seam allowance. Then sew them together. Since your main concern is making it dark, you don't have to be a master sewer, even a cheap machine can do it. the top is trickiest, but it can be done.
Hint:for walls-bedsheets! or any fabric...to reduce flapping, sew some long, inch wide strips of fabric on them to tie to the poles of the canopy on the ends. For curtains that must meet in the middle, place the ties at regular intervals so they meet up...and put them 6 inches or so away from the edge of the fabric so you overlap, and tie the curtains together. This will keep wind from blowing and letting light in.
Finally, use the fabric strips and sew loops on to the bottom of the curtain, where it meets the ground...you can put tent stakes thru these, and it will help the flapping.
This is a pain, and will be time consuming, but do it right and you'll be able to use it for years.

That's kind of what I was figuring granamyr. I hoped to get out of sewing a bunch of heavy fabric. I have tried the bedsheet idea for other sections of the haunt but the cheaper black ones still let in a lot of light through the cloth itself. I suppose if you get the higher thread count sheets they would work better but it kind of defeats the cheaper route.

Perdidoman, I am curious about spray painting the top of the canopy. Did the paint adhere or just flake off?

I wonder what a good source for cheap fabric is though. They removed the fabric center from our Walmart here. I bought yards and yards of fabric there at $1 and $2/ yard. How can I find large sections of cloth. Not just the stuff that 3-4 feet wide but 8,9,10 feet wide.

I've also thought about using rubber cement to line a couple of 25' x 25' polytarps with black plastic. That way I could use the existing grommets. Too bad the outside of the canopies will be bright blue! Instead of Road's End Cemetery I'll name it Sky Blue Cemetery! THAT says spooky!

One option might be to use your existing covers and spray them with products that are made for fabric. Both fabric dyes and fabric paints are available and will flex with the fabric. There are also a number of iron-on tapes, doubles sided iron-on interfacing, or fabric glues that will flex with the fabric, which could be used to attach a dark liner. A trip to a fabric store to see what is available and talk to staff at either a fabric store or upholstery shop is a good idea. They may have other suggestions to consider. Many times you can get a waterproof fabric like you would use to make vinyl table cloth, or weather proofing sprays. JoAnn's fabric usually has a 40% off coupon available so check that out. Good Luck.

You didn't say what you original canopies were made of. You may be able to use double sided tape to adhere the black plastic to you canopy tops.

Here maybe a different Idea for you.
maybe a black plastic (we used one year, that came in a roll, and was folded over twice so it was 8 foot wide and I can't remember how long)(We got it at the Home Depot).
OK with that said you could try using a latus and then pull some of the laths off then screwing to stay pulling the plastic between the them for weight and tie on to, that run around the outer edges.

I have used landscaping fabric in my haunt, you can usually pick it up cheap this time of year from Sams Club - Just look for the heavy duty stuff It blocks out light really well.

LL
We used the Krylon fusion

I think someone said it already, but I used weed mat to cover my white ceiling in one room... I happen to have two 25x20 foot sections of camo-netting that I staplegunned up over the weed mat. Different kind of weedmats out there, but some are pretty solid... that coupled with tarp or a dark visqueen (sp?).

On another note: We just took down the camo netting and weed mat this past weekend... It was up for 9 months. No lie. Anyway, good luck.