OverallI have made four down camping quilts over the past few years. These quilts are now a key part of my overall camping system.
For deep cold camping, they serve as an over quilt to my low cost 0ºF down bag and have allowed me to sleep warm down to -35ºF. This has also become my exclusive bag for everything from spring to fall, tent camping to hammock camping.
In warmer weather, I can lay on top of it and easily crawl underneath as it gets cool. Warmth is easily adjustable by exposing varying amount of your body. Of course, for a hammock there is nothing easier than a quilt. I have not yet tried one as an under quilt for the hammock, but plan to do so when it makes sense.
The only time I do not use a quilt is for those temperatures just below freezing. While they provide plenty of insulation, they can be drafty. I think this can be solved by adding a bivy sack to my layered approach to a sleeping system. A bivy sack could also make a lot of sense for deep cold camping when the quilt is used over a bag.
DownThe first question is where to find the down. My first two quilts I made from a couple of old down quilts which we had laying around the house. These quilts had been retired due to their baffles tearing out and the down clumping along the edges. The problem with this is not knowing the volume of down you are working with. My first quilt has a perfect amount of fill. The second larger quilt is under filled, so the down tends to slip to the sides of the quilt providing less warmth than desired. However, the price was right and it gave me some valuable experience in working with down (more on that later). And both quilts are still very functional.
There are several places to purchase bulk down. Thru-hiker.com and and Speerhammocks.com will sell 900 fill down in 3oz packages. However, their pricing is a bit higher than what I would like to spend since at these prices you are looking at well over $100 for a qulit. I have found a couple of other sources for larger quantities bulk down.
Feather Industries (Canada) Ltd,
www.featherind.com , is located in Toronto. I received a price sheet from them a couple of years ago. At the time, they had a wide selection of down and feather choices. Of course, we're only looking at pure down for our purposes, not a down feather blend. Depending on what you buy, the price can be a fraction of the the fancy stuff sold by the hiker boards. They had a 2 pound minimum order at the time.
I recently purchased gray goose down from Feathertex,
www.feathertex.com , out of Wisconsin. 700 fill power down (more on fill power in a moment) for $39 a pound, with a 1/4 pound minimum order. They were very easy and friendly to deal with. The down they sent was either over weight, or it was more than 700 fill power, since my two recent quilts ended up way overstuffed.
There are three factors to consider when buying down; net down (feather to down ratio), fill power, and testing method to determine fill power. Due to differences in testing, 800 fill power from one supplier may be identical to the 900 fill power from another supplier. Steam method will yield a higher number than the tumble dry method. Either way, it is up to you to decide what is in your budget and whether that extra ounce of weight reduction is worth the additional cost of the ultrahigh fill powers.
Handling down was one of the big concerns I had for this project. I imagined it would be impossible to transfer a very fluffy material from the supply bag to the quilt. What I found is that down is quite manageable to handle. When in a bulk bag, you can reach in a grab a fairly solid handful of down for transfer. It sticks together well and there is very little loss. I use handful size as a fairly repeatable way to distribute the down from one bulk bag to the individual baffle tubes. I have learned using a gram weight scale would be the best method to distribute the down. Don't let handling the down be a concern.
Or, if you prefer, you could go to a synthetic insulation. The method for fixing the insulation in place would be different,
DesignMy quilts are a blend of designs I found on the internet. The basic design and construction instructions came from Thru-Hiker.com , Jeremy Padgett's 17oz down quilt. (
http://www.thru-hiker.com/projects/down_quilt.php ) Jeremy provides an excellent tutorial on sewing the rip stop and no-see-um baffles, along with overall construction order. Another place to get ideas is Jack-R-Better,
www.jacksrbetter.com/ .
My main modification in construction technique is in locating where to place the baffles. For my quilts, the baffles were 8" apart. To measure these, I bought a sheet of foam core poster board from the dollar store and made an 8"wide straight edge. I can then easily step down the material length mark the baffle stitch lines with a soft lead pencil. Mark these lines on the inside of the quilt.
While I did set up a tent indoors like Jeremy for my first quilt, I don’t do that now that I have experience with down. Instead, I wait for a calm day and do the stuffing on my outside porch. You really don’t lose much material, and it is easily cleaned up with a vacuum, so you could do it indoors also. I stuff one baffle tube at a time then roll and fix the edge with a spring clip. Once done, I can then take the quilt inside and sew up the final edge. By removing one clip at a time as I come to it I lose no down during this process.
The main design change from Jeremy’s is I do not make a foot box. Instead I make a flat quilt and I install a drawstring along the bottom edge of the quilt with a cord lock. By cinching this tight, it forms a pseudo-footbox which easily hooks over my feet, or the end of a sleeping bag. This allows me the option of using the quilt in numerous ways; camping quilt, bed quilt, under quilt for a hammock. I have tried placing Velcro along the side edges at the bottom of the quilt to form a foot box, but I found it unnecessary. The following pictures highlight the fabrication of the drawstring channel, with a loop on one side for connecting to the cord lock on the other side.
I typically use 1.1 oz nylon rip stop with DWR. These can be sourced at numerous places on-line. My favorite place to deal with for material is Quest Outdoor Fabrics,
http://www.questoutfitters.com/ , in Florida. The owner is a real sweetheart to deal with.
My quilt sizes have varied from Jeremy's 72"x45" to 80"x50". The smaller size works very well for use inside a hammock, while you need the larger size to effectively cover a sleeping bag as an over quilt. The thickness and amount of overstuffing is up to you. Beware though, overstuffing tends to make the working size of the quilts smaller.
SummaryMaking a quilt takes just a few hours, and provides a low cost flexible sleeping system component for under $100. The best part of making your own gear is that you are free to explore you own ideas and modifications. Please let me know if you try making your own quilts. Please share your experiences and construction/design modifications.
