Tent stake bag

Published 2020-01-30

We use 10” barn spikes as stakes for our winter tent, because they’re cheap. We didn’t have a bag for them though, so I used some leftover canvas and made one up.

The body is just one long piece of canvas folded twice shortways to make a pouch and a lid flap. Checking the length of the canvas here.

I included a piece of leather on the inside bottom to prevent the sharp tips of the barn spikes from poking the canvas. I’ve centered the leather over the fold that marks the bottom edge of the pouch and marked it.

At first I tried to use the Speedy Stitcher to attach the leather, but it wasn’t working well. Trying to sew the thicker leather to the thinner canvas meant that the canvas kept bunching up with every stitch. The machine handled it fine.

I sewed an extra layer of olive green canvas to the outside of the bag (bag inside-out above) to add a little extra strength to the bottom, and also to hide the stitching where the leather liner attaches. Above I lined up the top edges of the green outer and sewed a quick line down the edges to keep it lined up.

Next I sewed bias tape to the edges, including the top edge of the pouch (which you can see just a corner of above). The bag is still inside out here. I continued the stitching all the way to the bottom of the pouch. When the pouch is turned rightside-out, that stitching will form the boundaries of the pocket. I also trimmed the bottom corners to eliminate some bulk (being careful not to cross the inner line of stitching).

All that was left was to turn the bag rightside-out and sew an extra piece of bias tape to the top of the flap to make a tie.