Fast Shade Tent Top Folding
Fantastically Folding Your Fast Shade Fabric
You’ve invested in a Fast Shade Tent! Good for you – Fast Shades are great for on-the-stop marketing and traveling from trade show to trade show. With custom printing allowing you to make the top literally reflect your organization, brand, or product, there is no limit to the amount of attention you can catch; now to keep your tent top that way.
Fast Shade tent tops are meant to take a common amount of wear – we have a 2 year no-fade guarantee on any prints, and the material itself can easily be used for up to 5 or 6 years showing minimal wear. To ensure that you get the full use out of your top, it’s vital to make sure you fold and store your top with care.
Never Store Your Tent Top on the Frame!
While it looks like it will fit – and we’ve tried it, it technically will – the tent top should never be stored still attached to the collapsed frame. The Fast Shade Roller Bag that accompanies your tent has two compartments: the main storage area and the front pouch. The main storage area is meant to hold the frame only; once the frame is collapsed and placed onto the roller bag base, the side flaps wrap around the frame and secure with a zipper and hook and loop straps to make sure everything is held in place. The front pouch is intended to hold the folded top. While it appears small, correctly folding your top will allow it to fit.
The Proper Fold
Just like when you learned in college that leaving your clean clothes in a pile in the basket actually takes up more room than if you’d just folded it (lesson learned, Mom!), making sure you fold the Fast Shade top correctly not only greatly reduces the stored size, but helps to protect the fabric from harm.
1.) Lay out the top in a triangle/trapezoid.
The starting point can be the hardest to achieve – lay out the tent with two parallel sides on top of each other. If not square, make sure the long sides are the “bottom and top” sides. Pick up each valance corner and bring toward the center, so that the side of the tent that isn’t the top or bottom is drawn out, then fold the corner back so that the enclosed side has no creases or folds and the bottom is in line with the bottoms of the top and bottom.
2.) Fold in half.
Left-to-right (or right-to-left, your choice), fold the entire tent in half. The bottom of the tent valance should stay lined up.
3.) Bring the far corner back to the folded edge.
Pick up the pointed edge that you’ve just folded to, and bring it back over the fold you just made, putting the point back at the folded edge. The bottom edges of the tent valance should all be lined up.
4.) Fold the peak/top down to meet up with the corner fold.
The corner fold and this top fold should not overlap; bring the peak down to match the remaining uncovered area. This fold will create equal layers across the fabric.
5.) Fold in half top-down.
This fold is to continue reducing the area, and to lock the previous two folds in place.
6.) Fold in thirds left-and-right.
Once in thirds the top should be small enough to fit into the front pouch. It will be a snug fit, but this will keep the fabric from rubbing or moving around, which may cause wear on the print.
The most important thing to remember about printed tent top care is to reduce any rubbing that may occur; leaving the top on the frame creates pinch points that can cause fabric wear, damaging the material or rubbing off parts of the print.
Fast Shade Tent Tops, Roller Bags, and more can be ordered 24/7 from our website, www.GetTent.com. With an expansive database in our Product Support and 24-hour Chat Support (located at the bottom right of any Celina website), we’re here to help you realize your dream tent. Contact us today!