My daughter wanted to do a weaving project so this is what her idea morphed into: a hammock.  I was originally thinking of something we could remake into a woven basket and eventually thought of weaving a hammock using an old rectangular steel frame we had. (A glass door from our last house came attached to it).  It was behind our shed rusting and waiting for some attention...and it got it.  If there is a short-cut that makes practical sense I'll find it. I thought of how nylon webbing could make a job like this much quicker and would also be very durable. After some reading, I decided to buy polypropylene webbing in a 1.5 inch width.  Poly webbing withstands the outdoors well, is very strong, and has a decent amount of stretch too. I found it on Ebay and in a color that would hide dirt well and go with our porch.  It was going to be for the kids play-set but it turned out too well for that. This hammock took almost every bit of 100 feet of webbing. When we began, I was going to leave it spaced out more but decided that would allow for too much movement and eventually larger spaces would open up where it held the most weight.  Leaving the weave snug shouldn't allow that to happen.

​

The frame is 84 by 38 inches, it's the perfect size for my two older kids and also long enough for my husband (who will likely never use it, but just in case...) We began by grinding off the loose rust, then I wiped it off with mineral spirits before I hung it on some stakes in the garden and gave it a couple coats of paint in a color as close as I could get to the webbing I'd ordered.  From there, I hung it on our porch at a height we could easily enough work around it.  We began weaving by running the webbing the length of the frame and pinning the end to itself after looping it around one side of the frame near the corner (I sewed it later).  When we got to the other side of the frame, I cut it off and pinned it again.  Next we started weaving by running the webbing in the opposite direction through the webbing running lengthwise.  Again I cut off the webbing and pinned it to itself after looping it around the frame near the corner.  We left the weave loose until we got near the end so that we could scoot the middle to the center (of the frame length) once we figured out what center would be.  It took a lot of tugging to get it all tightened up and later we decided to pull a little slack back through it to insure that the hammock would be comfortable and have some give (which was tedious and a bit difficult once it had been tightened up).

 

The only place the webbing is sewn is at the ends where the webbing is attached to the frame.  The weave throughout is not sewn, I felt like this would allow the webbing to adjust or shift with use. 

​

Finally, I tied it up with rope my Father-in-law had given us.  (With the rope being free this hammock cost no more than $32, the webbing was $29 and the spray paint $2 at Ollies. If I'd bought supplies for the original weaving/craft my daughter wanted to make it would have cost at least half that, while this will last a very long time and get much more use.)  My older kids had fought over this hammock many times, until they realized they both fit.  Also, my toddler pulls me to it to lay down with her.  All our effort has already been put to good use, which is awesome and pretty satisfying!!