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DIY quilt

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    • I spent this rainy day making a quilt for my buddy, Time Zone. He provided the Costco quilt and the excellent schematics and photos. It is nearly finished but will have to wait until Saturday.

      TZ got the instructions from someone on Hammock forums. m.imgur.com/gallery/kOXYm

      The hardest and most tedious part is removing the seams from the baffles. I found this YouTube video about picking out seams on a Costco quilt. It wasn’t always as easy as he makes it look, but it helped a lot. I can also recommend listening to music or a good book to pass the time while doing this step. :)

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      Lost in the right direction.
    • The schematics and a photo of what the quilt will look like when it’s finished. Rather, what it’s supposed to look like.
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      Lost in the right direction.
    • jimmyjam wrote:

      Your a brave girl. I'm scared of working with down. I just know I'd have those little feathers everywhere.
      JJ, thats the great thing about the costco quilts. They’re already put together and are very inexpensive. You can make lots of things with them. One trick to controlling the feathers is to sew two, parallel seams and cut between them. (In knitting, it’s called a steek, not sure what it’s called in sewing.). There were minimal, flying feathers on this project.
      Lost in the right direction.
    • Specifically, i sewed my seams about half an inch away from the existing seams, then cut. With the baffles, there are already a lot of seams in the quilt.

      The most tedious part was removing seams to turn the squares into long tubes. But, i learned something...i should have done this with my down skirt to make it less bulky.
      Lost in the right direction.
    • Oh fluffy and warm down topquilt, is there any lousy day you can't make better? :thumbsup:



      Many thanks to Traffic Jam! I want to pay her back, just need to figure out what sort of financial spreadsheet she likes best. :P

      With friends like TJ, who needs alteration shops that have no guts to try this sort of thing?
    • Time Zone wrote:

      Oh fluffy and warm down topquilt, is there any lousy day you can't make better? :thumbsup:



      Many thanks to Traffic Jam! I want to pay her back, just need to figure out what sort of financial spreadsheet she likes best. :P

      With friends like TJ, who needs alteration shops that have no guts to try this sort of thing?
      Your friendship is payment enough. :)

      I’m very happy it turned out good.
      Lost in the right direction.
    • Wanted to report on the warmth of this quilt design, which was, as noted, found on hammockforums dot net.

      Preface: I'm a cold sleeper ... meaning, I get cold at night easily. Very easily.

      I took this quilt as my only top insulation (save for clothing) at a backcountry site here in TN about a week ago. At the time there was a brief respite from the punishing heat - we had 80F high and 60F low at around 2000 ft elevation. I was in a hammock with bug net and CCF pad as insulation below. Temp was probably close to 70F at bedtime. I was fine.

      Around 3am I woke up feeling chilled. Granted, in addition to lower temps at 3am, there was a light breeze, probably 5-8 mph. [I'll note, as an aside, that "Sargvining" on youtube also found that the low temp of the CDT - for a hammock underquilt actually - was 60F. So as a topquilt, my experience was fairly consistent]

      Those who followed this thread may have noticed that one of the design elements of the CDT topquilt is to remove half the stitches from the quilt, in a given direction. This has the overall effect of increasing the warmth of the quilt, because a) it frees up down plumes and feathers trapped under the sewn-through stitching, b) half the cold spots are thus removed, since half the sewn through areas are now free to loft, and perhaps relatedly, c) the quilt lofts more overall after eliminating half the sewn through areas.

      A similar thing happened to me in a tent once, a nominal 20F down bag (long before EN ratings), 45F low temp overnight, felt chilled in the pre-dawn hours.

      In contrast, I've got a couple synthetic bags that have actually done better for me. Granted, they're more snug so maybe that helps. But I wonder if I'm experiencing a bit of down collapse or something from overnight humidity (which is nearly always high in the southeast). Of course, I wish my experience with down bags was better - they're so squishable and great feeling. And I love my down puffy for evening camp. It's just that for sleep, I don't do so well.

      I love these CDTs, they're so warm to get under watching TV or as supplemental warmth on your bed in wintertime (if you can keep it from sliding off). But in the field, there's just not enough in there for this cold sleeper. There goes my insulation plan for a UL kit! :/

      Traffic Jam's sewing job held up well against this restless camper's thrashings, though. Thank you again, friend!