Howdy doody,
I am trying to cover a 32' dome this year and am looking for a pattern. I have the time to fit it properly, and have the machine and some great vinyl. Sooo, does anyone have a pattern or tips or tricks?
cheers, Rezzydog
Covering our Geodesic Dome
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falk
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Re: Covering our Geodesic Dome
You happen to be in luck: I designed a 32' dome last year. You can find the cutting pattern for the cover at http://www.efalk.org/OasisDome/cover.pdfRezzydog wrote:Howdy doody,
I am trying to cover a 32' dome this year and am looking for a pattern. I have the time to fit it properly, and have the machine and some great vinyl. Sooo, does anyone have a pattern or tips or tricks?
cheers, Rezzydog
The cover I made was made in five sections and joined with velcro. With cotton canvas, each section weighed about 25 lbs. With vinyl, it will probably be a bit more.
This will be a perfect fit if your dome is frequency 4, but it would probably be a reasonable fit for any 32' dome.
NOTE: Do NOT cut 160 triangles and then try to stitch them together; it would be 10x the work and all the corners would be the meeting places for six seams and be impossible to sew (or seal with an iron if that's how you're doing it.) Instead, join the triangles together into horizontal strips and cut them out that way. See this photo: http://www.efalk.org/OasisDome/photos/bigs/dsc_0882.jpg or visit this web page: http://www.efalk.org/OasisDome/photos/ for more photos. Then sew the strips together and you won't have any seams crossing.
This pattern includes two doorways, but you can ignore them. Just make five identical panels from the part of the pattern with no doors.
Also, see this thread: Dome construction techniques
Awsome, I knew someone would save my bacon
Thanks a million, that is a great system. I was wondering about the connections, did you overlap your material or did you sew it together like a pillow case?
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falk
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Full-blown flat-felled seams. I left a 2" seam allowance around all of the strips. I then joined two strips right side together and trimmed one of the two seam allowances to 1", and folded the other over and top-stitched. It's really hard to describe in words; your best bet is to look up "flat felled seams" on the internet.
I also folded the seams up on the inside of the dome so that rain on the outside would run off them instead of collecting.
The tricky part of flat-felled seams is that you have to bunch some of the material under the arm of your sewing machine. We had to develop a way of carefully folding the canvas so it would fit. See the photos on http://www.efalk.org/OasisDome/photos/ for some pictures on how this was done.
Now, if you're working on vinyl, you probably don't have to do any of this fancy stuff. The vinyl won't fray and it's stronger stuff, so simple seams would probably be more than sufficient. You can seal the seams by ironing across them.
I also folded the seams up on the inside of the dome so that rain on the outside would run off them instead of collecting.
The tricky part of flat-felled seams is that you have to bunch some of the material under the arm of your sewing machine. We had to develop a way of carefully folding the canvas so it would fit. See the photos on http://www.efalk.org/OasisDome/photos/ for some pictures on how this was done.
Now, if you're working on vinyl, you probably don't have to do any of this fancy stuff. The vinyl won't fray and it's stronger stuff, so simple seams would probably be more than sufficient. You can seal the seams by ironing across them.