Hikers are doing it for themselves

... A post about making my own poncho quilt.

Original sketch

So I recently bought a nice new down quilt so why make my own? 

Well.. I've started planning for a long hike for next summer and I'm looking to shrink pack weight. At the same time I realise that sitting around camp in the cold needs more than the clothes I normally carry. I can swaddle in the quilt, but with a sewn in footbox it is a bit cumbersome for that.  So my thoughts turned to a dual purpose poncho quilt - and synthetic to be tolerant of the damp if I'm going to sit around in it.

The design is a fairly standard tapered quilt with a cinched end for the footbox and a rounded top to pull over your ears . The footbox includes a draft flap behind the closures. For the poncho the neck opening is a slot with a double baffle. The inner has velcro tabs for closure and the outer is insulated and stitched to (hopefully) lie flat.

The finished item

The fabric is 10D nylon from Adventurexpert - 22g/m2.  Initially I was planning for a lightweight Apex 100 fill, but after plenty of surfing and consideration I opted for Apex 167. That should make it good down to zero C, maybe with some extra layering. That added about 200g to the finished weight but it is still lighter than the quilt plus an extra in camp layer. 

Finished weight is 660g - about 10 grams heavier than if I bought one

(though if I bought one the quality would be better;).

The finished item is big.  Folding and rolling it up it's about 15L.  Putting it in a 13L dry bag it goes down to about 10,5L.  I'm hoping to get it into eight with the right stuff sack. - or maybe just throw it in the bottom of the backpack and let the rest of the kit do the compressing.

Making the footbox draft strap

I won't go into details on construction. There's good videos online on sewing a quilt using the 'sew the layers together and turn it inside out' technique. The quilt part took time but was straightforward. The neck opening was a bitch - pardon my French. My venerable Elna sewing machine didn't have enough space behind the sewing head to easily work in the middle of a big fluffy blanket.

Footbox cinch cord

Mistakes?  I've made a few  ;)   Troubles with one of cord channels - twice having to unpick while trying to stitch round the  neck slot, struggling to get six layers of material and insulation into a grosgrain edging... some wear and tear on the fabric.  No it's not perfect  - but  it ended up much as planned and hej - I made it!

As a quilt - before adding the neck slot

The finished quilt clips together nicely.  The poncho fits.  Indoors it's like wearing a sauna and i look like a Michelin man - but function over looks right?

Now I just need to try it out for real :)