Working with 7.5oz APEX

[JC]

I am new to making gear and have very little sewing experience but I want to try making a synthetic quilt using 7.5 oz APEX and .66 oz 10D nylon. My concern is that the insulation will be too thick for my sewing machine. It is a pretty cheap Brother unit. I will be making a slightly smaller version of this design. http://diygearsupply.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/DIYGS-Top-Quilt-lowres.jpg
Any advice for a newbie working with these materials? I will be practicing making a few stuff sacks from the DIY kit at ripstopbytheroll. Thanks!

[Roger Caffin]

There’s only one answer: try it.

cheers

 

[Jerry Adams]

7.5 ounce?  It’ll be very heavy and bulky to pack.  That’s when down is better.

(I don’t think you’ll have a problem sewing it, but all you can do is try.  Use lots of pins, or I prefer to do a bunch of hand stitches.  Practice with scraps first to get the technique down.)

[No Name]

Last week I made a quilt with 5 oz apex, and it is surprisingly compressible. I own a janome 521, and I think most machines will do alright. I would guess that sowing the 7.5 oz apex is not a problem on your machine.

I used a layer of paper between the foot and the apex and it worked great. Especially if you have a long piece of continuous paper, like the stuff amazon uses to fill up their largely empty boxes (although newspaper also works). And, use lots of pins. Good luck!

 

[JC]

Thanks for the advice. One more question before I place my order. If I want to make a quilt that is 72″ long could I get away with buying only 2 yards of insulation and 4 yards of fabric? this would be a lot cheaper but seems like it would leave no margin for error.

[No Name]

In case you haven’t ordered yet, I would advice you to reconsider your design choices. What will you be using your quilt for? 7.5oz seems very thick, normally 5 oz should be good up to about 30 F. And, below those temperatures you are more likely to deal with snow than rain, negating the advantage of having synthetic over down (down being much lighter). However, synthetic is much cheaper, so if that’s your aim, having 7.5 oz climax makes sense.

But, having said that, if cost efficiency is what you are after, you might also want to go for a bit cheaper skin fabric. 10D (0.7 oz/y) skin usually costs north of 10 $/y, while only a little heavier fabric (~1oz/y) goes for 6$/y. Personally I also prefer the slightly heavier 15D or 20D skin fabrics for quilts. Your quilt weight will be made up mostly of the climax, and the savings of the expensive skin material are not that significant.

I find it very convenient to have a bit too much fabric and trim it off than to end up with too small of a quilt. You will require about 1 inch of seam allowance on the edges, so if your material shows up to be 72 inch, your quilt will be less than 70 inch long.

I am not a quilt making expert, and other peope might have more validated opinions. But I hope this advice is of some use to you.

 

[JC]

I have an MLD spirit 28 which I am very happy with but I need something warmer and I am not willing to use down for ethical reasons. I appreciate the input though I will consider using a different fabric.

[Mario Caceres]

JC, I recently made a blanket (overbag) out of Climashiled Apex.  It helps quite a bit if you baste the seam before running it thru the machine.  This is time consuming but it helps to keep the different layers together and compresses a little the apex at the seam line so when you run it thru your machine everything is easier.

[R]

 

2 suggestions:

1. Make a summer quilt instead and then layer it with your Spirit in the winter (yeah – there’s a weight penalty here, but it’s cheaper and you get year round use)
2. With batting that thick, I bet you’d be fine just tacking it to the shell with short, ~1″ stitches every ~18″.  There’s no real load on the batting – you just need to keep it from floating around inside the shell.

You’d only need one pin per stitch to align the batting with the shell fabric, and the stitches are so short that insulation fibers getting caught on the machine foot won’t pull far enough to cause problems.

Applying this to the design you reference, sew the shell layers together first, then go back and tack on the insulation, sewing directly on top of, or just outside of the first seam.

Note that Apex tends to have a harder side and a softer side.  Put the harder side up as the fibers are more consolidated and less likely to snag.

[Nick Smolinske]

I would follow Rene’s suggestion to sew the shell together first, then add the insulation.  I hate sewing threw Apex with a machine and will do anything possible to avoid it.  And I sew for a living.  Others have different opinions/strengths, but that’s my take.

[JC]

Great thanks for the advice everyone. I will update this thread with progress.

[Russell Lawson]

Why not make two bags, a 5oz and 2.5oz? That way you can use them in three different ways, summer, fall/spring, winter.  will weight about 6ounces extra for the additional nylon. but you would do silk on the summer weight to save more weight.  just an idea

[JC]

For most of my trips a 20 degree bag is necessary so I feel it is worth the weight savings to have a real 20 degree instead of two bags layered. Also I figure I could use my spirit quilt over a 20 degree for cold winter trips which I would like to start doing. If this project goes well I might make a 40 degree quilt as well for low elevation summer trips. I guess ideally I would have three APEX quilts. A 3.6oz, 5 oz, and a 7.5 oz.

I ended up buying the .66 oz fabric because I want this quilt to be as light as possible for a 20 degree synthetic. Hopefully around 32oz. I could use this quilt and still have a base weight under 8 pounds which is really comfortable for me.

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