How to Make a Hammock

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Learn a few simple knots and macrame your own hammock!
Learn a few simple knots and macrame your own hammock!
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Hang your hammock where you can enjoy the view.
Hang your hammock where you can enjoy the view.
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There's nothing like a lazy summer day spent in a hammock you made yourself.
There's nothing like a lazy summer day spent in a hammock you made yourself.

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Living in balmy Ibiza, Spain calls for a lazy, comfortable bed … and when I first moved here (up in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean), I decided to make myself the laziest, most comfortable bed of all by macrameing my own hammock. The project was quite simple, very inexpensive and a lot more fun than buying a cot, couch or four-poster. The steady day-and-night uses to which I’ve put my handiwork since it was finished have also been a far greater creative joy than I’d expected.

Living with a fish net hammock is really fun when you arrange places to hang it both inside and out … so you can spend your days under big shady trees and your nights floating above the day’s accumulated clutter. A sling bed is also super-great in a small apartment or single room because there’s so much completely open floor space under the hammock for storing belongings or for use as extra sleeping area for a friend. During the day the piece of flexible furniture can be used as a storage rack … or magically transformed into a decorative tent by merely attaching its middle to the ceiling in a few places. Furthermore, a hammock is also a wonderfully convenient piece of warm weather camping gear: it’s easy to pack and lets air circulate all around you when you sleep … while keeping you out of reach of the creepy-crawlies and up off the cold, damp ground. When it rains you can just pull a canvas tarp over you so that it extends down past the sides of your aerial resting place … and the water will drain right off, leaving you snug inside.

Materials

You can macrame a hammock from the simplest of ingredients: two poles for the ends, cord for the middle and two eyebolts or some extra rope with which to hang the finished work of art.

  • Published on Jul 1, 1972
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