HEX Tarp Template

Could not be more pleased with this kit ripstop by the roll made it easy.

I ordered this with my son's winter tarp kit. I thought about returning it, but was very glad that I didn't. It made the process much easier for laying it out, my son didn't want cat cuts but i was able to make a template for them on my tarp. I am two tarps in and its getting easier, only three more kids that I will have to sew tarps for, and probably a dcf tarp for myself down the road.

I don't own this, but I have made tarps before this product was available and it is a HUGE pain to map out your cat cuts by hand. The first tarp I made, I saved the cut off pieces as a template and it made my next one a breeze. Take it from someone who has done it the hard way, this is a must-buy.

I bought one of these and was able to complete 2 full hex tarps in two morning sewing sessions. Nuff said.

It's a nice big piece of heavy paper with an outline of your new tarp printed on it. Not too much to say, right? Well, there are a few of small details that keep this from being a 5 star item. Since this will be the first review, I feel obligated to share all of those little details with you, my dear reader.

The first thing to note about this pattern is that it's only 1/4 of the finished shape of your tarp, which was a small surprise when I unpacked it. Of course, that's all you really need, and this could be discerned from carefully studying the product page. It comes folded up to about letter size, as advertised. Unfortunately, the last fold caused some pretty significant wrinkling and it's tough to get it to lay flat. Just a minor issue, and probably unavoidable without shipping in a much larger box.

My next small surprise came when I laid the cut out pattern onto my piece of 1.1 Silpoly PU4000. It's a bit on the small side: 57.5" x 70" by my tape. This means that you'll lose a couple inches on 60" wide material. I ordered the pattern largely to help with cat cuts, but ultimately I decided to omit them. I was thus able to extend the lines from the pattern easily, saving the waste. Being 70" long means that the pattern produces a 140" finished tarp which is 4" short of 12 feet. So, with a light heart, I dub this the HEX11.66 Tarp Template : )

I decided to splurge here when I was tempted with an impulse purchase offer while heading to checkout with a HEX12 kit in my cart (hint, hint). Still glad I did, even though I didn't use the cat cuts. The scrap paper has been super useful for patterning some little projects for my leftover materials. Perhaps I'll find someone to pass it along to who's planning to make a cat cut tarp. That'd be nice.