Over the last couple of weeks, my family and I have been on vacation in beautiful Colorado visiting with some family friends. While we made sure to enjoy ourselves, we also made sure to have a little fun. It’s hard for me to ever go anywhere and not bring something crafty along. Being outdoors and camping gave me the perfect opportunity to create this fun, easy, No-Sew Burlap TeePee.
You may be thinking…what is the idea behind the red, white, and blue teepee? It actually came from Ralph Lauren. No, we didn’t meet with Ralph Lauren, but we completely took this idea from him! How? Ralph Lauren owns some of the most beautiful lands in Colorado between Ouray and Telluride. It’s gorgeous, and every year he invites people for special parties that he likes to throw in these humongous TeePees, and they are DECKED out. (Here is a picture from Instagram I took…isn’t this land gorgeous!?)
While traveling back from our 4-day camping trip in Ouray, Co. we actually passed by his land and were able to see his TeePees. One of those TeePees was a beautiful Red, White, and Blue. It was the inspiration behind our project. While I don’t have a picture of his TeePee, I am going to show you how I made this TeePee.
How to Make a No-Sew Burlap TeePee
To get started with this project you will need a few supplies (here are mine with affiliate links):
- Burlap, Burlap, and Burlap (we used about 2 bolts with a 40% off coupon)
- Staples
- Staple gun
- 8 poles (12-15ft tall found at a lumber yard, in the woods, or make them from PVC pipe)
- rope (I used this paracord)
To get started, we grabbed three of our poles. I made a diagram below so you can see how I put the tripod base of the TeePee together.
After you have the rope tied around the poles, you can now stand the them up to create the tripod base for the TeePee. You don’t need any help, believe it or not, I did this entire TeePee frame all by myself. This can be a solo project.
Once you have the tripod in place, wrap more paracord around the top to help keep it secure.
After you have this secure and tied up, it’s time to start adding the additional poles. I took each pole and tried to make them even with the others. You will have to move them around a bit and also push the poles up taller for more height.
Once you have all of the poles evenly spaced and as all as you want, take the remaining rope and tie all of the poles together. This along with the tripod will make the structure secure. If you are in a windy environment like in the mountains in Colorado, you may also want to add stakes. Make a few tent stakes and tie them to the poles to keep them securely in place. Once you have the burlap fabric on, it can act like a sail if not surely tied down.
No-Sew Burlap TeePee Tutorial
The next step in the process is to take your staple gun and fabric and start working your way along the walls of the TeePee. There are a lot of different ways you can do this, but we decided it would look cooler to keep the poles unwrapped and visible. Keep wrapping the fabric and stapling as you go.
Continue adding your layers of fabric around and around until you have the desired look and feel of a TeePee. We did leave a space of about two feet at the top of out TeePee. We also left an entire side open for easy access from a rock path that was created.
This is such a big project, and one that really was a lot of fun. I have to admit, I did get a blister on the inside of my finger from using a ton of staples to keep the fabric secure.
