Down Quilt

In my quest to lighten the load that Kelly and I will be carrying, I decided to make my own down quilt. I guess it was also to quench my desire to tinker and create.

I'm sure Kelly will make a post about the mess I created. And I'll leave that to her.

A couple of things I wanted to accomplish with this quilt. One, I wanted it to be large enough for Kelly and I to share. Two, it had to be relatively light weight. And lastly, it had to be inexpensive.

First the inexpensive part. Well this is really inexpensive if you consider I was reusing materials I already had on hand. I decided to use the down from a 10 degree sleeping bag from Mountain Hardware what was too short for me and too big for Kelly and also weighed 3.5 pounds! I gutted the bag (kind of expensive but I got it on sale... Sorry Bryan for the destruction of the "CONDUIT!!") and took out the down (more on that later from Kelly). I then ordered fabric from Thruhiker.com. 1.1 ounce nylon ripstop with slight seconds. That's about half the cost of 1st quality fabric. It looked fine to me.

With the fabric purchased and the weight only being 1.1 oz per square yard I knew that this project was going to cut the weight down from the original bag. I did some test sewing with the new machine (later to be returned because I'm just going to end up using my mom's old Singer). I then headed for the final push. I spent about 4.5 hours cutting, prepping and sewing the majority of the quilt before I stuffed it with down the next day. Later I stuffed it and sewed up the remaining seams in just over 2 hours. Some of it was rushed, and there is one side that isn't as pretty as the rest. And some of the chambers aren't exactly the same size. The end result is pretty nice and only weighs 1.8 pounds.

You can view the album below just by clicking on it.

New Album 12/17/06 12:24 PM