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Tents
“It was hard work and made your hands hurt!” Finally, it was decided to use two designs from the books of JG Cone. Cone had been a member of the Kibbo Kift Kindred- the precursor of the Woodcraft Folk. Thus his tent designs had the right “woodcraft” feel to them. The designs were taken from his books “Make and Do the Woodcraft Way” and “Woodcraft Wisedom”. This decision was supported by photos of the period.
If you want to make your own tents, you can view the instructions we used to make our tents online. 
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A major part of the project was researching and then making the tents appropriate for a 1930’s camp. It soon became obvious that there was no standard tent used in the 1930’s Woodcraft Folk. The founder of the Woodcraft Folk- Leslie Paul, wrote the Folk Trail in 1926, and in its pages are a drawing for a tent called a “Itisa”- regrettably there are no instructions on its design. The same book includes drawings for bivy tents. On the other hand, contemporary photo’s of the 1930’s show bell tents in use.
In the 1930’s the Folk membership was drawn overwhelmingly from the working class- and the cheapest way to go camping was to make as much of the equipment oneself as possible. There was another driver for homemade kit. The early Woodcraft Folk drew part of its inspiration from William Morris who is remembered today as a writer and artist. However he was also a guild socialist. The Woodcraft Folk embraced aspects of his ideas. This manifested itself in the call for Folk members to make their own kit. It was seen as a direct challenge, and antidote to the mass production of industrial capitalism.
It is worth noting that tent making can be a protracted business. We had hoped that a weekend workshop, led by a tipi maker, would have been sufficient time to cut out and sew together all the required tents. This proved wishful thinking on our part, and only led to a renewed respect for tshose early Woodcrafters who sewed tents together with needle and sailor’s palm (a technique we decided to short cut by use of old sewing machines!) Theirs truly was a labour of love.