CUSTOM REAR DOOR SCREEN FOR THE AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

I'll warn you in advance that this can be a tedious and frustrating project.  But with commercially-available Airstream Interstate-compatible screens routinely selling for $350 to $500 (rear doors, Sprinter aftermarket) to $3,000 (Airstream OEM option for the sliding door, per owners who have reported getting cost estimates), you can get through it by reminding yourself of all the money you are saving because you suffered through the aggravation of fighting neodymium magnets in a sewing context.  Because in contrast to the pricey versions, my rear screen version costs about $20, and when I eventually get to the point of making a side screen, it won't be much more than that.

The Mercedes Sprinter van body is curved in three dimensions.  It's not just a flat panel with side-to-side curves.  There is also front-to-back curvature.  For this reason, it's almost bloody impossible to properly fit a screen to it through a process of conventional measuring.  The only sane way I found to tackle this project was to repeatedly fit it step by step.  Here's a general description of my process.

I began by taking a piece of no-see-um netting, available on Amazon for about seven bucks, and physically fitting it to the curb-side door opening, with neodymium dot magnets.  If you look closely at this pic, you can see white pin heads on three sides.  Those are the intended magnet positions that resulted from this initial fitting exercise. 

I should clarify that, for this version 2.0 of my screen, I decided to make a screen for just the one door.  My original plan (and my v. 1.0 prototype) was a full-width screen spanning both doors, but we subsequently added a custom hitch carrier that usually carries a Yeti cooler, blocking the street-side door from opening.  Furthermore, the Yeti side of the van is where my husband sleeps, and he doesn't like sleeping with his door open, whereas I do.  For these reasons, I re-designed this v. 2.0 screen to just cover my side, my door.  This makes for a more manageable crafting project, and it also makes for easier administration of the resulting screen.  For instance, if it starts to rain in the middle of the night, it's much easier to wrangle one door rather than two, in order to shut it quickly, especially when the hitch carrier is in place such that I have the rear step to use for this process.

Onward.

Once I cut the no-see-um shape based on that initial magnet fitting to the door frame, I began cutting side trim pieces out of a common black polyester liner fabric that is available in any fabric store.  During my earlier v. 1.0 screen trials, I found side strips to be essential in discouraging insects.  They tend to follow the light, plus their sense of mammalian exhaled carbon dioxide if they are biting insects.  They will walk all the way to the edge of any given barrier in an attempt to get around it.  If there's no border, they'll walk to the edge of the screen and circumvent it by squeezing underneath.  But if there's a border such as what is shown as being added above, they'll stop there.

I wanted about a 3 inch border, so for the top and center which are straight runs, I cut 8 inch strips, hemmed them on each raw edge, and basically sandwiched (more like taco'd) the no-see-um netting in them.  In other words I folded them into a hemmed V-shape and inserted the edge of the cut no-see-um netting into the fold.

Notice that I transposed onto the resulting fitted trim pieces all the original white pins which mark the magnet locations.  This is essential to sustain the integrity of the fit through this trimming process.  

The heavily-curved side piece took a bit more work to cut properly.

I laid the cut no-see-um netting on the polyester fabric and used it as a template for the first curved cut.

But then, of course, I had to basically trim off the remaining straight edge to create a curved strip of uniform width.  

Then I repeated the process of folding this curved strip in half, hemming each raw edge, and fitting it to the rest of the workpiece.  (Seam ironing at each stage is essential in this process, of course.  If you are a seamstress or seamster, you already know that).

Like this.

Notice how the bottom is still raw.  The final step, once this top section is fully fitted, magnet-ed, and sewn, is to add a solid piece on the bottom to take it all the way down to floor level.  Because we have jack-knife couches, I chose not to run the no-see-um all the way to the floor.  Having a solid fabric across the bottom discourages our dog from getting too engaged with whatever she sees outside beyond this screen.  She's well-behaved but I wanted to restrict her vision in this area so that she would be less inspired to try to push through it.  

Then there's the arduous and curse-producing process of hand-sewing in each magnet.

I used a combination of larger plastic-coated neodymiums that were left over from a previous project, and smaller dot magnets.  The larger ones I placed in areas where there was an abundant width of metal door frame exposed.  Smaller ones were used in tighter areas. 

It's very important to hand-baste in the magnets before the side seams are sewn up.  You have to be able to reach under the pinned trim to do this in the proper order.  Order of operations, in other words.

And then it becomes a real pain in the ass to complete the trim sewing, because the neodymiums will stick to everything - your sewing machine plate and foot, each other, your scissors, your pins, etc.  It takes more patience than any human should be forced to summon.  

For the smaller dot magnets, I took a different approach.  I inserted each intended magnet into the places on the trim pocket where they were supposed to go, but then (this is important) I held them in place by adding a temporary magnet on the OUTside of the fabric.  This basically held them captive in the correct locations and allowed me to hand-baste them securely into place without them sliding around, or flying across the room in response to some attractive piece of nearby metal, as neodymiums tend to do.  

If you choose to try this project, understand that it is best done as an iterative process.  You might not get it exactly right on the first try, but you can always carefully re-open your seams and make adjustments as needed.

For instance, working around the lower door hinge was a pain.  I had to get everything sewn and every other magnet in place before I could determine conclusively where this supplemental magnet, represented by the white pin head, needed to be placed.  That two-pronged door keeper you see folds inward when the door shuts (Edit: There also has to be room to be able to reach in and detach this keeper, if the door is to be folded back to the Sprinter body).  I couldn't have it potentially snagging the screen and yanking it off the door frame, because I was designing this screen to stay in place regardless of whether the door is open or shut.  So I'll carefully open up this section of side seam, slide in and anchor another dot magnet at the pin head location, and close it back up again. 

One thing to keep in mind is that it's important to exploit every anchoring opportunity, because in some places, they are limited by the door mechanics and trim.

For instance on the bottom threshold, our 2006 Sprinter reveals this exposed, recessed bolt.  Sure enough, I positioned a neodymium dot to attach to this bolt to help anchor the bottom edge. 

Here's an illustration of why I chose to use variable magnet sizes.  There's just a tiny piece of exposed metal inward of these door contact points.  Airstream's trim covers up most of that section of the Sprinter van body, and I did not want to remove that trim because its aesthetics are pleasing.  Therefore I didn't have room here to place a wider magnet of any kind and still be able to shut the door with the screen in place.  So there are tiny dot magnets just to the inside left of these contact points. 

Now for a couple of money shots.  If you are meticulous and a person skilled in the textile arts, you can spot a few errors I've made in this design.  But if you make your own screen using methods similar to what I've presented here, I'd suggest not sweating the small stuff.  The screen is black and its trim pieces are also black.  It becomes very difficult to see imperfections and personally, I have so many Interstate projects that I intend to complete that I did not want to devote an excessive amount of time to making this project "perfect".  It's a door screen, not an evening gown.

View from the outside in.  See what I mean?  It doesn't exactly jump out and slap you in the face visually.  Nor is it supposed to.

You can see in the photo above the solid piece I attached to the bottom of the no-see-um section.  I took this pic before I had totally completed the clean-up work on the piece, so I hadn't even ironed that section yet.  You can see the original bolt fold near the no-see-um screen. 

And here's the more important view, which is from the inside out.

Not a perfect execution, but presentable.  

And how does it work in practice?

This week, I tested it after dark in a Gulf of Mexico coastal salt marsh, which of course is mosquito heaven.  It does function as designed.  I had no bug penetration to speak of (the far larger problem remains bugs that follow me into the Interstate when I'm entering the vehicle or when I let the dog out to pee).  

 For more discussion on Airstream Interstate screens in general (pros and cons of various approaches), see this Air Forums thread.