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I'm  fairly  new  ,but a  long  time  lurker .I have seen tenacious tape mentioned for  fixing tears but don't have any experience of it .  Might be worth a try .

Hi there Hugh. I see this is your first post , so welcome aboard UKCS!

As others have said, tenacious tape is good enough as a temporary repair. Link HERE to the supplier mentioned above (just scroll down the page).

Tents often come with a repair patch supplied. I reckon if you repair the damage with tenacious tape on both surfaces of the fabric, that will hold the repair together. Then if you want to finish off with a patch (more for cosmetic reasons ) I would say that you can safely stitch the fabric over the damaged area, but you need to then seal the stitch holes which I would do with tape and silicon seam sealant (as is used on the tent seams of manmade fabric tents) so that it is waterproof.

To be honest, I have never used the patches - just the double layer of tape, and one such repair has been holding together for the last two years with no problem.

I always use Copydex. 

Lightly sew the rip together.  Get a patch and liberally coat with copydex.  Apply the patch to the inside of the tent. 

Go to the outside of the tent and make sure the whole of the area is stuck to the patch.   Tuck any frayed frabric into the tear and make tidy. 

The Copydex is applied as a liquid which then soaks into the fabric and dries to a latex rubber.  Takes about ten minutes.

Finish off with a liberal dose of water proofing.  Hey presto, a repaired tent that is waterproof.

Repairs depend on where the tear is, if it's in a high stress area, then it will require more than if it's in the middle of a section of flysheet or on the inner tent.

Typically, if in the middle of a non-high tension section, an effective repair would need just a patch of material sewn round, followed by holding the edges of the tear together using zig-zag stitch along the tear. This would then need to be proofed using a proprietry sealant (obviously don't worry about sealing if the tear was on the inner). This can be done using a home sewing machine, so long as the arm has enough room for the tent to be able to be fed through.

If it is in a high tension area, I would suggest using the same method as above, but with a slightly heavier 'patch' material, or a patch on both sides.