So step one in our construction process is optional, but I feel it’s more practical than not both for safety and storage. We used a small pipe cutter to shorten the length of the tip of the umbrella as we won’t need it for our project. Alternately a hacksaw would work as well if you are careful.
Here we have the original fabric for our umbrella that we are replacing. For this design style they used 8 panels of fabric to create the nice round look to it. After looking at this I realized I could simplify the sewing and assembly of the project easily.
So using a razor blade and some patience I separated 2 half’s of the fabric down the center seam to create a simple pattern to cut out in our new material.
The easiest way I found to trace the pattern to the new material was to simply mark with dots the tips of each corner and use a straight edge to mark up the lines. Make sure you also do the connecting lines between the center point and each tip so you can align the wires once all assembled.
Hard to see… but here you can see the traced patterns as described that we will be cutting out.
