Your low budget, easy to make, transport and pitch tent option is a simple wedge tent, that only needs two poles, with minimal ropes, or two plus a ridge pole with No ropes, and sleeps two with very little effort or expenditure.
Put two of those together with a fly and you have tents for four, and a communal area, and you can add more tents to the mix in almost infinite permutations.
Here’s a very rough & ready sketch,
home.armourarchive.org/members/r … 20tent.pdf
That design needs only simple straight seams, which should be sewn as a flat-felled seam. Always match straight of grain to Bias if joining a triangle to any other piece.
For Canvas, Whalleys of Bradford.
whaleys-bradford.ltd.uk/cotton-canvas-cc29
If you use 108" canvas, you don’t even need to sew the middle seam.
I’ve made a couple of fairly serious tents, on domestic sewing machines. It’s a lot easier than you may think.
Mine were along these lines,
greydragon.org/pavilions/index.html
Cheers
Hob of the Culloch
some other resources,
moas.atlantia.sca.org/wsnlinks/i … t&catid=73