A Karo Quilt

[Aaron Sorensen]

Made a 14-6 karo quilt for a friend as a christmas present.
It is made with a lot of room, 64" top down to 42". He is also 6'3" and 210.
I even needed to put a foot box in it instead of doing a draw cord that I wanted to do.

Material is M90 and 10 ounces of down.
The groundcloth is just sil nylon.
It is designed to get down to 30 degrees.

Just sewed the foot up about 8" then there are 5 snaps to keep the quilt together making it more "bag like", what he wanted.
I also made a black waterproof groundcloth. There are also 5 snaps on each side of the groundcloth to open the bag up even more.
Another 10" in the head tapering to an extra 6 inches at the foot area, (you can see this in the pic with the measuring tape).
The quilt is intended for fastpacking and unsupported record attempts.
The stuff sack doubles as a pillow and is attached to the groundcloth, (you can kind of see in one picture).
With the quilt snapped to the groundcloth, you can just put a closed cell pad down, pull out the bag, craw in and go to sleep.

I wish I would have done a 14-9 on the karo as you can shift the down way to easily.
The 4" of loft is measuring both to and bottom.

Weight is 17 ounces for the quilt and 6.5 for the groundcloth with stuffsack.

[Adrian MITCHELL]

I presume you used baffles, rather than sewn-through construction, given the intended temp range. One question tho. considering you have about 2" of single thickness loft, what was your baffle height, and what did you think of the height you used? could ave been more, could have been less? thanks.

[Aaron Sorensen]

I used 1 3/4". I think a karo style works better being a little over stuffed, (less down shift). It would have been perfect with a 14-9.

[Adrian MITCHELL]

thanks,
Great work, i'm inspired, just need to find some time.

Also, who is your friend? his intended use for the quilt sounds very intriguing!

[Ultra Magnus]

I like it! It's pretty much exactly what I've been wanting to do (just need the time and money to do it!!)

I have read it before, but could you explain better what 14-9 vs 14-6? I'm assuming 14" squares and 9" of gap between where you sewed it? Did you sew the whole thing except for one corner to insert the down? When you put the down in, how hard was it to get it all shifted even through the quilt? In regards to detail pics, more is always better…

Sorry for all the questions and thanks for the post…

BM

[Adrian MITCHELL]

pretty good explanation in this thread

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=51009&disable_pagination=1

[Aaron Sorensen]

Yes,
Look at the blue picture toward the bottom from Chris Lucas.

The bag was made for my friend Michael Popov.
I got 2 pair of La Sportiva's plus fabric cost for it.

I sewed all but about a foot of the bottom of the quilt, stuffed the down bags in all the way down to the 3rd sqaure down, after taking a lot of the air out then cutting the top off. Then I just turned the bag inside out. Then moved the bags to the 2nd square from the bottom, got off as much down as I could, moved them to the bottom square and I could look in and see one of the bags. Got as much down off it as I could before taking it out, moved the other bag so I could see it, repeated the process and cleaned up the little bit of mess left over.
Not as easy as it looks due to the plastic bag being having some static on it. I would have just used a big cardboard tube, stuffed it all in the tube and pushed it all out. I just didn't have a carboard tube.

[Adrian MITCHELL]

Just read up on your (and your friend's) jmt record attempt, very awesome.

[Author]

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