DIY Toddler Tent

I want to make it clear that I did not intend for the DIY toddler tent I built to become a bed. But my son slept in it so often that we had to make some adjustments so he could comfortably sleep in there.

That said, let’s do this.

This one isn’t too difficult. There’s little to no construction but you do need to be reasonably comfortable enough with a sewing machine. If you can sew in a straight line, you’re good to go 🙂

The ingredients for this DIY Toddler tent:

• 5 dowel rods (I went with 6 ft long, 1 in thick rods. You can pick these up in the lumber section of any big box home improvement store)
• A large canvas tarp – about 15×30 worked for me
• Some rope, maybe about 1/2 – 3/4 in thick in diameter
• Thread for sewing
• Power drill

The recipe:

1. Drill through the center of each dowel rod about 4 inches from the top. Use a clamp to hold the rods steady if you need to. These holes are going to be where you thread your rope to to hold the tent together so you want to make sure you drill through the center of the dowel rods.
2. If you’d like to sand/stain/paint your dowel rods, this is your window.
3. Cut 4 isosceles triangles. The bottom to the top of these triangles should be 6 feet high. The width of the triangle will depend on how wide you’d ideally like to situate your tent. For example, if you’d like a tent diameter of 4 feet, you’d need to use your circumference formula of pi(r)^2 to get a 12.56 foot parameter. Knowing you have 4 triangles to create, you can take 12.56/4 to get 4 feet. Which is not coincidentally the diameter you wanted in the first place. The width of each triangle will always be the same as the diameter you’d like to optimally have when you use 5 dowel rods and make exactly 4 triangles.
4. Once you’re done, cut the top 6 inches off of each canvas triangle
5. Roll the edge of each triangle and sew them down to prevent the material from unravelling.
6. Take the long edge of each triangle and sew them together to create a 3D cone with a front side (outside) and a back side (inside).
7. After that, take each seam and sew 1.25″ from the edge to create a 1.25″ slot for each dowel rod to slide into.
8. Slide each dowel rod into a slot.
9. Once your canvas tent has all 5 dowel rods inside each slot, take your rope and tie it through each of the 5 dowel rods. Tie it tight and loop around several times if you need to. If your knot comes unraveled your tent will fall apart so make sure this is nice and taut.
10. We made one adjustment where we bought this round infant mattress that fit into our tent perfectly. Then I made a zippered circular fitted sheet so it was easily washable and voila! Your DIY toddler tent bed is done!