Synthetic Quilts

2024-01-24

Design Notes

Years ago, I made a 7.5 synthetic quilt. It was too long, heavy and poorly made, but hell it was warm. The draw of synthetic insulation is that it doesn’t lose the insulation properties of the material when wet, unlike down. When down wets out, it will compress and no longer keep you warm. This 7.5oz quilt has been my bag of choice for winter trips, and it’s kept me warm during some miserable wet, cold evenings.

Maggie bought a super heavy, bulky sleeping bag a while ago. As a Christmas gift, I decided to make her a similar quilt for use on our adventures. I also decided to make myself an ultralight quilt for future fast-packing adventures and Vol-Biv adventures even further in the future.

Both quilts would share the following features:

• Tapered bottom section w/ 3 snaps along the taper taper
• Loop and cinch on bottom closure
• Single buckle clasp on top and elastic cinch

Mine would use a single layer of 3.6oz apex insulation and orange and purple Ion Fabric, and I would use 2 layers of 3.6 for Maggie’s and Hexon 1.6 fabric in orange/purple/black.

Fabrication Notes

I decided to sew patterns into the top of both quilts. I had a hell of a time lining everything up, even though the panels were all straight cuts. My sewing machine would pull along the slippery fabric of the bottom panel, but there wasn’t enough friction between the layers to pull along the top as much. My mom does a bunch of real quilt sewing with convex/concave curves, and she suggested pinning the fabric every 6 inches or so. I’ll try that next time.

Use Notes

I’m psyched with how these all turned out. Mine packs down to roughly the size of a Nalgene bottle, and Maggie’s is much, much smaller than her other bag. We took a trip to Ventana over new years’s eve, and we camped the night in a valley where it was damp and maybe ~40f. Maggie said that she was warm and toasty!