Down Top Quilt

[Orion]

That treadle machine is quite nice looking. It must be fun to use. My mother had an old Singer that looked kind of like that, built into a wooden desk. Her's was electric but the machine flipped over and disappeared inside so when not in use the table was flat and unobstructed. My girlfriend's machine is just something she could afford when she was a poor college student. She had been hand sewing her clothes.

My feet sometimes get cold and so I wanted a real foot box. That's one aspect of many commercial quilts (like the Enlightened one I mentioned) that I don't like. I modeled the foot box for my quilt after one of my Western Mountaineering sleeping bags. Basically it's a slightly oval shape with two horizontal baffled sections. Sewing it to the main part of the bag takes some time and care. Because I chose to fill it before doing this step it was a little harder to turn the whole thing inside out in order to get hidden stitches. The inner (black) fringe connects to the last inner part of the main quilt and the outer (red) fringe to the outer part of the quilt. So the loose fringe you see in the photos below is part of the final baffled and filled tube that goes around the quilt. This insures an uninterrupted loft down by my feet.

This end piece weighed 7.2g empty and 20.5g stuffed with down.

[simonm]

Very nice. I usually get hot feet so not sure if I need that or not, though a few more Tassie trips may change my mind on that. I definitely would of lost my mind if I had tried to sew a footbox like that in the time had left.

You look like you have a heap of loft in that thing what's the temp rating?

[Orion]

It's roughly 340g of 900 fill down and total weight around 510g. The two quilts aren't exactly identical. I've slept in the first one down to about 0°C, without a tent, and I was fine. It compares roughly to the Enlightened Revelation 800 Regular/Regular 30°F.

I mostly use mine in the Sierra of California above 3000m. It can be hot but typically it is cool at night even in mid-summer. I've also slept in it Tasmania. The last time there I had it at the base of Federation and it was a record temperature day. It was so warm even in the early morning that I didn't even need my quilt. I only used it stuffed in its sack as a pillow so the foot box construction was not important.

[simonm]

I just weighed mine and it is 704grams, with a bit over 400grams of 850 fill down.

[icefest]

What are Karo baffles?

[simonm]

This link explains the karo step baffles better than my words could http://ramblinghemlock.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/diy-karo-top-quilt.html

[simonm]

I also measured my loft this morning and came up with a nice 3 inches which should get me down to -7deg C pretty comfortably.

[icefest]

Thanks, I've wondered how they work before - that explained it quite well.