Quote Originally Posted by leiavoia View Post
There is no “best”. There are basically 5 underquilt suspension styles with pros and cons:

Side channel: well documented. Heavy. Taco blanket. Reduced visibility. Foot annoyance.
Wookie: light. Easy. Floppy sides.
4-corner: simplistic design. Not very adjustable. Reduced visibility
Clew: self adjusting. Complex design. Light.
Spandex / stretch mesh: like Speer Snugfit. Heavy. Self adjusting. Lots of cool fabric options.

The easiest to make is probably the 4-corner design. The easiest to hang would be the Wookie, clew, or spandex designs, with clew and spandex design being self adjusting.

I did write-ups on the clew and spandex designs:

Clew suspensions

Spandex underquilts

Thanks so much for the breakdown--this is quite helpful.
I have a few follow-up questions:

1) Would one of these lend themselves better to a 3/4 length UQ than the others?
- I am wary of designs like the Spandex since it would require so much additional fabric to stretch to the ends of the hammock (negating the weight advantage of a 3/4
length?), although it otherwise looks great.

2) Would it be possible to do the clew suspension with sewn loops as opposed to the KAM snaps?
- Once again, with 3/4 length, would this be problematic? I have read that it may cause problems for my feet.

3) Last, insofar as I can tell the wookie is more often just a product rather than a common DIY project, is this correct?

The 4 corners is appealing because of the ease of construction, although with this being my first UQ and first real DIY project I do not know how annoying the 'fiddly bits' and 'adjusting' would be and don't mind putting in a bit of extra work on the front end if it will help significantly when I am out sleeping..

This is a 3/4 length quilt with ~2 inches of loft. Primarily intended for summer, although I would love if it could get me started on shoulder season as well. I just needed an affordable way to try out quilts / get out camping with my hammock!

Thank you SO much for the advice! It is quite priceless to me since these differing suspension systems have seemed quite overwhelming!