Hi Everyone,

I was lucky enough to get a Thru-Hiker quilt kit for xmas and looking through the online instructions I have a couple of questions.

I want a 2.5” loft so hopefully it will be good to 20 degrees. Does this mean I need to make the baffles 2.5” high, or is it a bit less so the down can fill the chambers and puff it out to 2.5”?

The instructions say to cut 6” strips for the baffles, do I really need 2 inch seam allowances? would 1” be enough to double back? I can sew pretty straight.

Last one is regarding length, I understand that when filled with down the quilt will loose some length due to the puffyness. How much length roughly will be lost? I’m 6’3” so want to make sure it ends up being long enough for me.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Cheers,
Simon

Simon,
So, I just finished a quilt with a kit this past week. Let me see if I can answer some of your questions. If you got a kit you should first rough out a plan and calculate the approximate amount of down you will need. The rough formula is (L*W*H)/900. 900 is the fill should be replaced with the fill power. H is the baffle height and L and W the length and width of the quilt. Since the quilt will likely not be a rectangle this formula will yield only an approximate answer. 

My baffle height was 2.75 and I overfilled by roughly 10%. I really didn’t loose much, maybe an inch or so, length but I feel I would like a little more down to fill things out. A friend of mine recommends taking a full quarter inch off of the loft you are shooting for so the quilt really fills out. In all I used about 15 ounces and have a consistant nearly three inches of loft. I used two inches of seam allowance (one inch for each seam, 4.75 inch strips) and was ok. The fold was roughly the width of the presser foot.

For quilt dimensions I referred to this post http://www.thru-hiker.com/x/index.php/forums/viewthread/261/ on the forum. Make sure to take into account how you sleep. I recommend pinning your pattern into a blanket and seeing if you can live with it. Err on the side of caution.

What is your plan looking like so far?

A quick picture

Hi Jaherche,

Thanks for the reply, some very helpful info there, and the thread you linked to. Your quilt looks awesome BTW.

I forgot to put that I have worked out the size and volume that I want as per the instructions, although I will now go and test the blanket method to make sure! I’m a side sleeper so might find I need to widen it a bit.

For your quilt did you want 3” loft and do 2.75” baffle heights?

At the moment my plan is 78” x 52” at the head and after 28” tapering to 44” at the foot end. The foot box will have 14” dia (big feet) all this times 2.5” loft gets around 10000ci volume. So with 900FP down and adding 10% means 12oz should be about right.

How does all this sound?

Thanks,
Simon

That all sounds pretty good. I was shooting for between 2.75 and 3. One thing I wished was that I left more for seam allowances on the edges of the momentum. I made rolled seams but I had to make some additions with momentum scraps to make the draw cord channels.

Hows the quilt going?

Hi

Thanks for remembering the thread :-)
My Quilt has taken a back seat for the last couple of weeks, life has a habit of getting in the way!

I have been doing some more research on baffle height, and found some advice saying the baffles should be around 3/4 the height of the worked out volume. It seems a bit small to have 1.88” baffles, so I might go for 2” and see.
I’m still a bit unsure about how the footbox attaches as well, so I spent some time this weekend making a mock-up of the bottom 1/3 of the quilt to see how the baffles fill out (with shreaded paper) and how I can attach the footbox.

When I get a chance to stock up on more thread and needles, I will at last be starting!

Cheers
Simon