New Awning - sewing and metal repair

It works!

We have a new awning! 

We have a functional awning!

 After years of not quite being able to get the Tin Pickle's awning to deploy properly, we did some investigating. What we discovered gave us a list of Things To Do Differently.

 Before we had even ordered fabric for making the replacement awning, we knew to 1) install the awning right side up, 2) be sure not to over crimp the channel that holds it at the top, 3) use a fabric that can withstand the sun, 4) use non-cotton thread to avoid rotting, 5) make the awning long enough so that it the upper awning support bars can actually reach the sides of the roller tube, 6) replace the missing left bar claw with a mirror image, not a copy, of the right bar claw, and 7) tension the awning pole enough so that the awning rolls up under the metal cover rather than sitting on top of it. That's quite an education that we have the previous owner(s) to thank for.

 At its top edge, the awning fabric is folded over and sewn to a flexible plastic cord called awning rope. This awning rope slides into a tubular channel that holds the top of the awning. The awning channel is gently squeezed to help retain the awning rope and awning in position.

The original channel had gotten so thoroughly crushed by a previous owner's enthusiastic crimping that we felt it was beyond repair. The awning rope is usually a snug fit in the channel and chewed up edges would damage the fabric around the awning rope as it got pulled through.

We ordered new channel (in 4' sections to avoid freight charges). Bart cut the old channel off with the jigsaw and riveted the new channel in place, carefully keeping the sections aligned.

Riveting on a new channel section

The old, chewed up channel

Meanwhile, Barbie cut and sewed the Sunbrella fabric, using the industrial walking foot sewing machine at TechShop Menlo Park. TechShop has big tables which make laying out and marking the fabric ever so much easier. That big a piece of stiff canvas has a mind of its own. The walking foot on the sewing machine never lets the fabric slip, so keeping the top and bottom pieces feeding at the same rate becomes possible.

Sunbrella is pretty stiff stuff. If you need to fold it over for a hem or a seam, it helps make a flatter fold if you run an awl down the fold line first. Barbie then used basting tape to hold the folds in place before sewing two fabric panels together. The basting tape did a great job of holding a folded edge down, but did a lousy job of holding two panels in position while they were being sewed. There is no temporary adhesive that will hold against the weight and pull of 12 yards of Sunbrella.  Instead, the walking foot kept the fabric from shifting. Details of seam construction are down below.

Scribing a fold line helps flatten folds

12 yards of Sunbrella

Empty awning cover, with filed channel mouth

Bart milled a new claw

The old claws aren't made any more

 Above, you can see the newly installed channel. Bart filed down the sharp leading edge corners so that the fabric wouldn't snag going in.

Bart's repairs also included making a new left claw for the top bar of the awning mechanism. The claws latch on to the tube at the bottom of the awning and hold it away from the trailer.

Bart cut and milled the new claw out of a solid piece of aluminum, so it should hold up for a while.

That's a lot of cloth!

The new canopy strap stows on the underside

Pulling the top of the awning into the channel took two ladders and three people. It was a snug fit, which will help keep it secure.

The strap for unrolling the canopy is long enough to roll up with the canopy when it is put away, but it needs to be stashed when the canopy is open. Barbie got to put the loops for storing the canopy low enough for her to be able to reach them. It is nice having them on the underside of the canopy, instead of on top, where they were with the previous awning.

The old awning never rolled completely

The new awning fits under the cover

Oops! Took the turn a bit too fast.

Barbie's Awning Tips:

I learned a lot from this process, some by research, some by being taught, and a lot by trial and error. Watching videos at Sailrite.com helped me get my bearings. Taking the industrial sewing machine class at TechShop Menlo Park helped me use a new tool, without which I could never have made a functional awning. 

Through Sailrite, I learned about basting tape. Basting tape is great stuff. Large projects and thick canvas are both hard to pin. Large projects made from thick canvas are impossible to pin. It turns out you can't hold them with basting tape either. But the basting tape does hold a folded over edge in place. I could overlap two panels so that the raw edges of the folded sides butted against each. I would then sew two lines of stitching, one along each fold, trusting the walking foot to feed the top and bottom layers at the same rate.

I sewed the panels together first, hemming only the first edge. In retrospect, I should have left that first one unhemmed as well. The panel seams used up a bit more fabric than I had calculated. I was glad to have at least one unhemmed edge. Once I had all the panels together, I remeasured the awning width and recalculated where to hem the remaining side. I used basting tape for the first fold and then held the second fold under by hand while I overstitched through all three layers.

I folded under the top edge with basting tape and then used basting tape between the fold and the awning rope. With that edge fairly secure, I could wrap a single thickness of awning fabric over the awning rope and then sew all the layers together. It is very important to stretch the fabric as flat as possible when attaching it to the awning rope. Any wrinkles will bunch up and make it hard to pull the covered awning rope through the channel.

At this point, we did a test fit of the awning to determine how far from the top to locate the awning tube. Remember, the old awning was too short - by about 6 inches. We threaded some of the awning into the channel and stretched it as tight as we could around the bare awning tube and measured the desired length of the awning. We then subtracted a couple of inches in order to put some pressure on the arm springs. In retrospect, subtracting only one inch would have been ideal.

I sewed the awning tube by measuring and chalking a line at the calculated length from the bottom edge of the awning (careful cutting for uniform panel lengths pays off here). I folded the awning edge over 5" away from this line, thereby ending up with a 10" circumference for the awning tube. An extra 1/2" would have helped. It was a very snug fit. I lined the awning stripes of the two layers up with each other and kept the fold 5" away from the seam line. I let the walking feet of the machine make sure that the top and bottom didn't pucker.

For the bottom scallops, I was faced with the problem of the seams that took up more fabric than I'd planned. This meant that some light blue stripes (those with seams) were a bit narrower than others. If I went with a continuous wave, this difference would shift the dark blue out of the scallop center. If I shortened the wave at the offending stripes, the height of the curve tops would be noticeably different. So I compromised. I made a nice down-scallop to fit the dark blue lines, but radiused it into a simple horizontal line across the lighter blue. The top part of the overall design remains uniform and the different widths across the light blue sections isn't noticeable. Or is it? You tell me.

The final sewing challenge was an edging for the scallops. I chose Sunbrella bias tape because I wanted the durability and similarity of materials. The nylon edge binding that Sailrite recommends is easier to bend and keep in place, but it looks a bit bulkier and gets a bit fuzzy over time (we're talking decades). I'm still glad I went with the Sunbrella bias, but if I'd honed my technique a bit more, I would have ended up with scallops that lay flatter. The trick with any bias tape is to make sure that you feed enough tape in to go comfortably around the OUTSIDE of every bend. Otherwise, the tape will pull the edges in and the fabric in the middle of the arc with puff a bit.

Before we tugged the awning through the channel, there was one more task to do. Each point where a seam folded over the awning rope had to be trimmed to no more than a single layer of fabric. If you try this project, testing your materials in your channel should be one of your first steps. We knew we had a very snug fit with the awning rope and channel combination that we chose. Bart also filed the corners at the end of the channel opening so they would help guide the fabric in instead of poking and catching on even the tiniest wrinkle. 


The cutting and sewing part of the project took almost exactly 14 hours. I didn't count how much time I put into design, calculations and research.

There. Now you know everything I know about sewing awnings.

(If you want to know more about the process and you don't know me personally, sign up for airforums.com and send me a PM there. I'm webspinner. )