New UQ idea

[ZMad2000]

I was wondering if people have messed around with different baffle layout?

So far the only 2 that i know of are the Standard I-Beam baffles and the Karo.

After i finished my Karo quilt i was wondering if there would be an easy way to sew the baffles and yet not have to calculate and weight out the down. Yeah i know i want to have my cake and eat it to.



Here is a pattern i was thinking of for an under quilt. Once all the baffles are sewn in u sew all the way around but leave one area like in the picture or on the other side to have more access open. Then you would start to stuff. Now i know stuffing it is going to be a bit of a pain since u will have to shake it up every so often but the down over time will spread put evenly.

Oh and the baffles could go as i have displayed it from left to right or top to bottom.

[Syb]

Interesting. I'm harvesting down from a quilt now and this has possibilities as measuring down for each section is a real pain. Thanks for the idea.

[jayo]

Neat idea. I think it would be a pain to originally get the down spread evenly, but after that it shouldn't shift around too much. I like it! For an underquilt, gravity tries to pull the down towards the center, away from your channel "holes", helping prevent shifting.

I've been tossing around in my head another idea for down control, which is to have no baffles at all, but to loosely quilt the underquilt. Meaning, every two inches or so, use thread to make a loop that ties the top and bottom shell layers a fixed distance apart. Similar to traditional hand quilting, except leaving space between the top and bottom shells instead of having the fabric layers touch there. This has a couple advantages and a lot of disadvantages:

+ don't have to buy or sew baffle fabric; thread quilting is lighter/cheaper. Either save the weight or add extra down to get extra warmth for the same weight as if it had baffles. My estimates with no-see-um is that there is about 20 grams difference for the UQ size I'm considering.
+ precise control on how thick each bit of the quilt is by varying height of the quilting stitch - you have to pair this with careful shaping of the outer shell. You can also do this with baffles to a large degree.

---- you have to precisely tie hundreds of stupid knots
- I'm not sure how much this would impede down movement. Too much down shifting would be unfortunate.
- you'll see the quilting stitches on the underquilt. Might look cool, might be ugly?

[JohnSawyer]

Interesting idea. There was a link to a down processor's website somewhere that showed a video of a down comforter being filled. It looked to me that the boxes were partially open on one end, so a row of them could be filled all at once.

Your zig-zag fill method might be overkill.. You might be ok just leaving one entire side as a fill-channel. Yes, it would take a bit of work to fill.

I like the fact that Stormcrow will pre-package your down for you in presized packages, making filling much easier...

[Syb]

And what if the baffles in the UQ ran the length of your hammock and you did the same thing like the attached pic? This example shows 8 total chambers but you would only have to fill the bottom 4 and then move the down around. Am I totally off track here? You wouldn't have to precisely measure each chamber. My thinking is that the down in a typical UQ moves toward the center when hung, right? So, baffles wouldn't be running the entire length of the UQ but would allow the down to be moved around and - I'm no gram weenie - save weight. Thoughts?

[ZMad2000]

I am liking where this is going. Now i just wish i had enough down to make both patterns!!!

[Syb]

I am liking where this is going. Now i just wish i had enough down to make both patterns!!!

You make yours and I'll try mine. We're both in NJ so we can plan a group outing and test the quilts. I'm also thinking about more gaps in the baffle material to create a more Karo-like uq. We'll see. Let the harvesting of down continue!

[jdneri]

love this idea