Go big or go home right?
Most people make a few stuff sacks, maybe a tarp, I figured I'd jump in head-first on a summer quilt, following the excellent writeup by Jamie Shortt.
Fabric is 0.9 oz black DWR ripstop from OWFINC, and the down came from Thru-hiker. Final finished weight is 14.3 oz, roughly 7 oz of 900 fill. Max shoulder girth is right around 52 inches, footbox circumference is right around 41 inches. I wanted to err on the side of too much quilt, as I'm just getting into the whole quilt thing.
To the pics…
Top view
Sewn-in footbox, the idea of having a hole in the footbox, as with a drawcord design, didn't thrill me, so I went with more of a sleeping bag style footbox.
Underside of quilt, again, sewn rather than velcro.
It's tough to tell in this pic, but I used a very short stitch length (1.8 was the setting on my machine) and the smallest needle I could find locally. The result is very tight construction that appears that it will hold down leakage at bay very nicely.
First impressions are that it might be a tad underfilled, especially towards the top. I do still have a solid 2+ ounces of down to work with though, if I decide it needs some additional help in that department.
The initial construction, cutting the material, sewing the shell, marking/sewing the baffles was much easier than I was expecting. The actual filling process (shopvac method) was much more difficult/tedious than expected. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. As I've heard people say, everyone else will think it looks a lot nicer than I do, and I think they're right, but I'm confident it will work pretty nicely for my needs…now it just needs to warm up to the point that I can consistently use this thing!
