DIY Down Topquilt 1st Timer Walkthrough

[Mileage]

I’ve been a long time lurker here with only a few posts in recent weeks as I’ve embarked on making a DIY Down topquilt. I have a WBBB XLC and a Sierra Designs Backcountry Quilt. I have only used my Thermarest NeoAir All Season in the hammock as I ran out of time to buy a underquilt before I left the US, but a Wookie is on my Xmas list! When I bought the SD quilt I was barely even aware of the cottage industry for hammock gear, but have watched and learned over the last 2 years.

I want to document my planning and build in the hopes of helping others as much as I have been helped by all those that post projects and videos.

I decided to build a topquilt for my girlfriend to replace the heavy synthetic sleeping bag she has. The quilt will be for mainly tent camping with the hopes of getting her to consider hammocking (and once I’ve made an underquilt too).

Living in the UK hammocking is not quite as popular as in the US so I have not seen any other quilts in real life except for my Sierra Designs Backcountry Quilt I bought in the US about 2 years ago. I used that to work out what I liked and the dimensions of what I wanted to build, and then looked around extensively online to see what other people were doing and borrow ideas and techniques. The quilt was to be about 2m long, 150cm wide at the widest point and good down to about 0 C. So the baffles will be 4cm.

I have written this walkthrough up in the hopes that it may be a help to other new DIYers as much as others have helped me. All my measurments are in metric as that’s how I think. Ive had a headache the last few weeks converting inches/ounces into centimetres/grams but its starting to become automatic now.

I would like to send out a sincere thanks to these people in particular for the superb videos that they have taken the time to create and load on Youtube. Anyone looking to make an attempt at their own quilt will find all they need to know with these vids or by searching the forums here.

Tacblades – for all the creative ideas for quilts and the really good sewing technique videos.
https://www.youtube.com/user/tacblades/videos

Dubber – great detailed top and underquilt videos, and I see just today another great explanation on quilt design
https://www.youtube.com/user/kduvey/videos

Grapenut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jGh9XCBQ5Y

PaCampingDad
https://www.youtube.com/user/PaCampingDad/videos

Joe Brewer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KnfpfrSm7g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5gPKrAE6Bk

When deciding what type of baffle design I wanted to use I looked a lot on HF as well as the Make Your Own Gear (MYOG) forum on Backpacking Light
https://backpackinglight.com/forums/...your-own-gear/

Another good resource with some amazing looking quilts is the Aussie sight Bushwalk. They have a lot of long distance hikers there, and despite being dry it can get very cold up in the mountains. Check their MYOG forums out if you’ve never visited.
http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=53

So on with the build….

[Mileage]

I had never used a sewing machine before, although my mom made a lot of our clothes until I reached high school so I spent a fair number of evening at the dining room table watching her sew and I think at least some of it sank in. When my girlfriend got out her machine to start sewing up some Xmas stockings I asked her to show me how it all worked and gave it a few test runs on some scraps she had from her project. She has a Singer Simple and I messed around with all the stitch widths and types as well as the tension to work out what they effected on the sewing. Tacblades’ videos helped a lot at this stage. Along the way I realised that the quality of the thread was really important. You can see the difference in fluff that these two have. The red is Gutterman and the black is some dirt cheap stuff I picked up to practice with.
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I wanted something to practice techniques on with little cost so went down the local charity shop and bought an old double duvet cover for £4. I just cut the seams off and that gave me about 150cm x 175cm which worked out well for a scaled down practice run.
The design I decided on was a modification of the Karo Step mod that Tacblades did here…
https://hammockforums.net/forum/show...ferent-baffles

He mentioned that he would lengthen the baffles slightly to 40cm so I decided to do that.

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So got the fabric all laid out on the floor and taped down and proceeded to mark out the shape with a Sharpie and then cut. 1st Lesson – the Sharpie can bleed into the fabric and through the fabric to the surface underneath if the fabric is porous like cotton. So that was a reason to buy some Tailors Chalk.
The basic pattern was 25cm x 25cm grid with diagonal baffles
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At this stage looking at the design I didn’t like the assymetrical design that the baffles created so I redid the design to have a V baffle in the middle and then the rest evenly on both sides.
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And on the other side I didn’t draw out the whole lines but just the intersections. Less chalk/pen marks to deal with.
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I practiced sewing baffles made from the off cuts of the duvet cover and made sure that I could manoeuvre the quilt through the sewing machine. I sewed about 75% of the baffles until I was comfortable that I could do it. I then practised sewing up two of the side seams and that went well so I moved on.

The next mini project was to whip up a tarp from material I bought from Profabrics for £2 a metre. It was damaged on one side of the roll so was only about 130cm wide when trimmed but that was fine to make a 2.6 x 3m tarp. The fabric is DWR but not fully waterproof but when I ran the hose over it it did a good job of shedding water. Its more of a shade tarp for back home in South Africa so pretty happy with it for a first attempt for a total cost of £14!
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[Mileage]

Then on with the main project of the topquilt. I ordered the materials from Extreme Textile (I had previously ordered the sample pack for about £5 so I knew what I was getting).

3m of PTX Quantum 20d Ripstop – Black – outer shell
3m of Nylon Taffeta 20d – Turquoise Blue – inner shell
1.5m ultra lightweight mosquito netting - for baffles

Started out with the baffles and cut them with a roller cutter. Marked out the widths (6cm) and the size I wanted for the actual baffle depth (4cm) I drew this out with yellow chalk so it was fairly clear against the black netting.
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I then layed out the black PTX Quantum and drew out the pattern for the shape, baffles and seam allowances. The material was just 152cm wide and I wanted 150cm width for the quilt so I only trimmed a small amount off the edges. I figured the rest of the rough edge would be covered up when I did the rolled seams along the edges. Grid is 25cm x 25cm squares with 40cm diagonal baffles.
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Then taped on the baffles lining up the lines on the baffles with lines on the shell. I had marked the exact start and end points for sewing so it was just a matter of sewing exactly along the lines between the check marks to make 40cm long baffles.
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Then trimmed off the edges and the shape for the footbox. The footbox will extend up by 50cm as the GF wants to be able to stick a leg out easily. The shape cut out is 50cm x 25cm
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Then repeat with the inner shell.
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I used the scraps cut off the footbox angles to practice my rolled hems and straight stitch on the actual material and found that I needed quite a loose tension (1.5) to stop the material bunching up while sewing.

Then I decided to do the bottom of the footbox. This would give some practice with sewing the baffles to both sides, as well as the rolled seams around the edges. The footbox is 25cm x 25cm with a 1cm rolled seam on the edge.

The baffles worked well and I was happy with the loft they would give.
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The footbox also gave me a chance to experiment with using contrasting threads to give some subtle highlights to what would otherwise be plain black or blue. I put about 15g of down in the footbox base and it was well lofted.
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[Mileage]

So feeling more confident I started on with sewing in the baffles on the main part once again using contrasting thread.
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Then on to sewing the inner shell and outer together. This went fairly well. I just took plenty of time and worked systematically. NOTE: If you are going to try this baffle pattern start with the V’s in the middle and then work out to the sides.
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I sewed up the side seams and the bottom seam leaving the top to stuff the down through. The seams along the anlges for the footbox and the bottom seam were more generous to give me material to work with when sewing the footbox in.

Then I clipped the footbox base in place (avoiding pins to reduce holes) and then 50cm upwards to complete the footbox.

At this time its probably good to mention that I deliberately rolled the seams black over (outer over) on the footbox but rolled blue over on the main body, so that when I sewed the footbox up I would again have a contrast, as well as a contrast edge on the black shell. I sewed the two seams together to create the footbox. I really like how it turned out.
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I also sewed in a reinforcing triangle at the junction. The triangle had some thicker canvas type fabric sandwiched in between to make sure that it would hold up.
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Then I clipped up the top seam with a short overlap on the ends to create small hand pockets like by SD quilt has. These work really well at helping you to tuck the quilt in around your neck. You fluff a little down into them and they are toasty for your hands.
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At this point I should point out that I didn’t buy new down for the project but harvested it from a second hand sleeping bag I picked up on Gumtree. (similar to Craigslist). It came from a pretty high quality bag that I paid £40 for and gave me just over 800g of down. I have 400g left for another project. The person had bought the bags for a Kilimanjaro climbing trip that never happened and they had been in the cupboard for a few years and never used. They were then emigrating and trying to get rid of stuff so I scored big time.

Considering that down from Extreme Textiles would have cost about £110 that was a bargain. The down is about 800FP. It was quite a morning getting it all out. I just undid the seam on the top of the bag and slit all the baffles down so all the down fell to the bottom of the bag. I then scooped up handfuls and compressed it in my hands until I couldn’t hold anymore and then put it into a Ziploc bag. I found by the time I couldn’t fit anymore into the Ziploc I had about 100g in the bag. So 8 bags later and a bit of vacuuming and it was done. I happened to get two of the same bags so I have the potential of 800g more down. 1.6kg (56oz) of down for £80 is a steal.

I then retreated to the bathroom and stuffed 400g of down into the quilt. I managed to achieve this with relatively little mess that a quick vacuum with a piece of the cut off baffle netting over the tube didn’t collect. I just opened the Ziploc a fraction, squeezed the air out until it was more compact and then pushed the Ziploc down through a few baffles until it was in the lower part of the quilt and then turned the bag Ziploc inside out and shook it a bit. Gently and slowly pull the Ziploc out and only minimal spilled down.

I then sewed the top seam up.
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[Mileage]

A bit of time fluffing up the down and spreading it around and the quilt was complete.

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Very happy with how it came out. It is super soft & comfortable.


If the down is evenly spread out it lofts to about 5-6cm. If you move it more towards the centre is lofts substantially higher. 30s of shaking moves the down around enough that it can easily be manipulated for different temperatures.

I hope these pictures and directions can help some more people explore successful DIY Down quilts.
My next step is a Bug Net Hammock and then an underquilt.

[captainhaddock]

Nicely done! Looks awesome!

Now I feel like I should get on with my TQ project. :-)

Pretty neat with finding those down sleeping bags for such a cheap price.


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[FJRpilot]

Looks great!


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