Sleep Tight, Don't Let the Midges Bite

A Guide To:
Making Insect Netting Out of Tights
For you and your camper van

After long day spent in the Scottish outdoors you set up camp and start to wind down. The sun's on it's way out, yer bellies full o' tattie scones and beans. Starry clouds flicker in the night sky, your eyes feel heavy and as the fire's dying you realise those starry clouds are actually eating your face.

With relief you escape the dipteran's banquet on your head to the safety of the tent and begin to snooze. . .

. . . you wake.

Hm, this itch needs scratching. It's nothing. That itchy nose needs itching, it's fine. Your fingers are also itchy. Just one more scratch and then back to sleep you tell yourself. Actually, better scratch these itchy itches that need scratching too. Now you find you itched the itches too much and those itches have become scratches and those scratches have itches of their own that need scratching and itching also.

And now it's on your eye lids.

The reality of your situation slowly materialises as the full body natural acupuncture descends and it becomes apparent that gauze of your tent is actually an air filter stuck on purify by midges.

After various attempts to save myself from this onslaught with bin bags and duct tape I revised the execution of my next excursion to nature. This time, with my mini-camper van.

The Guide:

This guide is for making a midge filter for rear car windows with hinges, made from tights.
Tights work great as nets, the same principle can be applied in whatever creative means needed to stop the flying biting bug(Erugh)s.

Items to make:

Ladder resistant tights

Strong double sided tape

Duct tape

Rope or wire (To secure the windows rubber seal tucking the mesh if needs be)

Tools:

Electric screw driver and corresponding bits

Scissors

A spare pair of hands

Unhinge your hinge! Open your window and with care have your helper hold onto the window as you remove it from the car.

If you have large double sided tape, misuse and cut it into thinner strips. Line the inside of your window roughly inline with frames of the windows. It's okay not to be too accurate as the tights can stretch. Next

You only need the legs of the tights. Remove the foot and waist... waste and cut them away at their seams.

Cut the length of the tights with a width of roughly the same as the widest opening of your window. Extra width can be left to allow more room when tucking the tights away at the end.

Line the tights along the tape with the excess material laying towards the centre of the window. Contrary to their name, the tights must not be tight! See the first picture laying the tights down.

Note; Stick the tights smoothly over the tape, allow for excess material towards the middle of the window.

Reinforce with duct tape.

With help from a second set of hands, reattach the windows to the appropriate tightness.

Using either your fingers or an edging tool, tuck the slack of the tights around the seal of the window. This should create a nice and tidy finish.

The top part of the window seal, on my vehicle, isn't attached snug as is with the bottom. So I creatively misused a spare bit of wire of a thickness that would snugly fit into the gap. I measured the wire around the frame and simply cut it.

To create the snug fit on the top half I tucked the tights into the groove of the window seal with the the wiring laying over the top.

You are now ready to go!

Now go to the outdoors in your camper/cars/vans and camp the night away midge free! Enjoy!