extreme light fabrics for synthetic quilts…paradigm shift?

[Adam Kilpatrick]

It strikes me that many of the minimum fabric standards used, such as DWR, calendaring, tightness of weave, relative strength, are LESS important if a quilt is insulated with modern Synthetic fill, like Climashield APEX (which requires no baffling and has high amounts of integrity). DWR: Insulation is far less impacted by moisture than down. If shelter is adequate then DWR not an issue…doesn't matter much if shell fabric wets out from condensation if the fill is synthetic. Calendaring/tight weave: No feathers or small pieces of down to escape. Strength/durability: small tears or holes or thinly worn fabric, if it happens, is a non issue as the insulation isn't about to escape in a hurry. Particularly for liners of Synth Quilts, why aren't we yet seeing really light fabrics? All the fabrics I've seen used by any of the bag/quilt makers, are pretty much all overkill based on these parameters, the fabrics are designed for the much higher demands on down. 7D fabrics seem to have dissapeared…when they were around they were being used for down, perhaps with not that much success (hence why they have dissapeared?). But a 7D fabric with no DWR could be quite light. M50 from thru-hiker is listed as 0.7oz, BUT they list the "base weight" as 0.5oz. This is a big difference over a DWR fabric for down use. A fabric with lower DWR might breath faster (perhaps, perhaps very very marginal…be interesting to test pre and post DWR from the manufacturer) thus drying out the insulation faster than a fabric with DWR. Looking at Alibaba there are mills out there pumping out 7D fabrics. Some big name brands use 7D fabrics for down product shells (likely rather well quality controlled and expensive, and of course with heavy calendaring and DWR). Its easy to leave DWR off a fabric, just don't put it on. So manufacturing isn't an issue. Thoughts?

[Aaron Sorensen]

I think some of it has to do with those factories. There are plenty (or at least more than a few) 7d fabrics you can get hold of. Problem is quality control. Since these are such limited productions, when they get purchased, many times the sample will be completely different than what you end up getting. So you could love the sample with a nice weight and what you end up is heavier than the sample and in many cases heavier than 10d fabrics. Some also come out a lot more crinkly. So as of now, no cottage manufacture wants to spend double on 7d than 10d and risk it coming out what they don't want.

[Roger Caffin]

Perception, perception, perception. Synthetic fill is the cheap end of the market, compared to down. 7D fabrics of good quality are the expensive end of the market. So who is going to try to sell a cheap synthetic SB with a really expensive shell? Cheers

[Ryan Smith]

"Looking at Alibaba there are mills out there pumping out 7D fabrics" Keep in mind too that many of the 7D fabrics you see on Alibaba are actually 10D or 15D which is quite a bit more common. Sometimes the Chinese deliberately have problems with the conversion to English if you catch my drift. Ryan

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