Firstly, an apology for the glare in some of the photos, it seems churlish to complain about a bit of bright weather in England.
Anyway....
Having built the pergola some time back (2021, yes it's now 2024..) I decided it was about time I got around to making up the shade sail for it.
In honesty I'd bought the material AND a sewing machine back in 2022 so there was never any excuse but you know...
The fabric came from UK Fabrics Online and it's a 600 denier waterproof PVC backed sheet which comes in a 1.5m width. It came in at just under £41 for 6m
I'd sketched out what I thought would work, the original plan being to set it inside the upper frame just beneath the cross beams and secure it all round with bungee cord / aerolastic / elastic rope (delete according to your preferred term).
I watched a lot of videos on the Sailrite YouTube channel which really helped with the planning and decisions on how to join two sections together and how to finish edges. I needed to join two pieces because the span I needed was around 2.5m and the material width was 1.5m.
I went with a full flat felled seam which is like a double overlap.
You can see below that my stitching has a touch of meandering to it, in my defence it was the first time I've ever attempted it and I was also working with a 3.0m x 2.5m piece of material in a workspace about 1.5m square..
I also knew I wanted wide (40mm) hems because I wanted to fit the necessary eyelets and fixings between the stitch lines on the hems.
I did a 40mm double hem but I literally just noticed as I type this that I missed the instructions on Sailrite's site on how to reduce the external corners in order to make them less thick (less layers). So my external corners are 5 or 6 layers thick if I include the bias bound sections and they did make the sewing machine grunt when I stitched over them.
They are also marginally too thick for the fasteners which is exactly the point that Sailrite make when they say "reduce the corners".. So all the external corner fasteners are a little more difficult to secure
Speaking of bias binding, yup that was a new one on me but it's the method used to create a good finish on an internal corner (if you get the stitching right) and I'm indebted to Allsewpetite for her YouTube video on how to do it
On the subject of stitching, let's briefly mention
the sewing machine, I bought a Singer Heavy Duty HD6705C and generally it flew through nearly everything that was asked of it, not bad considering I was learning as I went. I paid £461.00 for it from Singer Machines online
I used a black heavy duty thread that I think I got from Amazon and I'm happy with the look of it although I'll note that the black thread against the grey fabric makes all my wavy sewing and other mistakes stand out like a sore thumb! I can't find the Amazon order for the thread but I think it cost around £8
The original plan was to set it inside the upper framework but as I was doing some measurements (having already joined the two sections and cut it to rough size) when I realised that meant it would drip water directly onto the seats which was no good.
Accordingly I redesigned it to extend to the underside of the two rearmost beams so any draining water would go to the outside.
So here is the front edge of the shade sail showing the hooks on the undersides of the beams and the routing of the elastic rope through the eyelets.
It uses a single piece of elastic rope Amazon £9.99* secured to a hook on the top side at each end and then routed along the top of the sheet, dropping through the sheet at each interim hook point.
Note*: Paid link. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
The original plan was to secure it like this all the way around. Because I built the pergola with a fall to the rear corner, it would drain ok but as I mentioned above, in the measuring process I realised that by finishing it with a gap to the inside of the beams, any water would drain straight on top of the seating area. Not so clever.
So, a quick rethink later saw me finish the rear edges on the underside of the beams as shown here and fastening with turnbutton fasteners rather than elastic rope. Incidentally, all the fasteners came from J Clarke Marine on ebay They also have fitting instructions on the J Clarke Marine youtube channel They are all just "hammer in" fixings so easy enough to fit. The eyelets came with the installation tools and I bought the punch tool for the turnbutton fasteners from J Clarke along with the fixings. Total cost of the fixings was £68.65
So that the rear edges look something like this
And really that's pretty much it.
All in all then the material cost was around £120 not including the sewing machine which was around £350 but I didn’t buy it for this project alone so I sort of exclude it from the overall cost.
If you’ve got any comments or questions please feel free to let me know and I’ll respond as appropriate.
Paul
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