sister_raphael: (makingthings)
Rosalie's Medieval Woman ([personal profile] sister_raphael) wrote2025-05-29 12:25 pm
Entry tags:

Tent

I bought a tent this week!



My sister and the twins are coming along to the Abbey Medieval Festival this year and I needed some sleeping options for them, the best of which was putting them all in my large pavilion and making a change room to the side there and filling the rest with beds.

The biggest issue with this is that my display would then need to go into my round tent, which is possible but produces a sub-standard display. The inside walls of the "room" being rounded offer a lot of wasted space, so after a lot of hard thought, I decided what I really needed was a square marquee with walls of the same size and the round tent. The corners and flat walls echo an inside room rather than a tent, which better fits the display.

Tents aren't cheap, especially ones suited to re-enactment. I know what you're thinking, square tents aren't really right anyway. They do turn up extremely scarcely in some manuscripts, but even then, they have a different roof line and are rectangular, like the pattern I based by big pavilion on. My round tent (which is perfectly normal for re-enactment) will be used not this year, but in future years for any number of things, but I decided that having the options of a square one for interstate displays where there is little room, and the roof can be used without walls for shading an eating area, if needed.

It's a Past Tents tent, which I bought from Medieval Fight Club, as it was already on Australian soil and therefore guaranteed to arrive well before time. The canvas is very thick and it looks very waterproof! I have yet to erect the tent, but today I'm busy cutting and painting a new centre pole from hardwood to help support the weight of the canvas.
yarnandglue: (Default)

[personal profile] yarnandglue 2025-06-02 03:02 pm (UTC)(link)
That's a good looking tent! I hope you have a great time!
medievalrosalie: (borntoshop)

[personal profile] medievalrosalie 2025-06-08 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
Quality-wise, it's great. Historically, it's a terrible tent. I can only document 2 square tents in the medieval period and they're both well outside of my time period, and more Tudor. I have two great tents already, but as mentioned, not a good fit for what I need it to do at the moment. I feel bad for using a wrong tent, because it encourages others to do likewise (Oh, she is an experienced re-enactor, so it MUST be correct, and I'll just copy her without checking for myself) and I've really avoided getting a square tent for years for this very reason.