Customer Project: Crimson Winter Topquilt

by Ken

• OVERVIEW
• HOW DO I MAKE IT
• MATERIALS

• 10F tapered winter topquilt.  78" x 54" (54" at top 42" at bottom) 
  
  Made with 1.1 calendered ripstop nylon, 3.5" noseeum baffle material and about 1.5 pounds of down.
  
  There were a lot of things that I need to figure out along the way:
  1.  tapering the footbox, differential baffles and a separate piece of fabric made the construction of the outside fabric and attachment much more difficult and needed lots of math calculations and experiments to make it work.
  2. Differential baffles (4" inside and 4.75" outside) requires some kind of pleats to make it work.  
  3. Outer-most baffles required additional fabric width.  I probably pinned the edges about 4 or 5 times until it worked.
  4. The prongs for the Kam snaps work fine on the edges but don't hold when going through 2 layers of grosgrain and 4 layers of 1.1 ripstop.  Needed to find then order a package of Kam snaps with long prongs.
• Started with a basic drawing (attached) then realized that the outside dimensions would be too wide for a single piece of fabric when I used differential baffles so I ordered an additional 3 yrd of black ripstop and picked up from the new location the next day.
  
  Cut interior shell (crimson) to size after marking all of the cutting and attachment points
  
  Marked and attached 3.5 noseeum baffle material to interior shell
  
  Measured, cut and constructed outershell using black 1.1 ripstop at the footbox and head and charcoal 1.1 ripstop for the body.  this was probably the most difficult part of the project due to the horizontal differential baffles for the footbox and head and vertical differential baffles for the body.
  
  First, attached vertical noseeum baffle material to the body then the horizontal  noseeum baffle material to the footbox 
  
  sewed the inside and outside shell bottom and one side of the black footbox.  partially sewed the other side of the footbox with gaps wide enough to insert shopvac tube to insert down later.
  
  Sewed inside and outside shell body material together.
  
  Filled footbox and body baffle material with 850 fp down using shopvac tube and scale.
  
  Sewed top and sides of top together leaving a gap for the shopvac tube.
  
  Filled with down, closed gaps and added snaps and drawstrings at top and bottom of topquilt.
  
  Over the past 2 years I have made 4 hammocks, 2 tarps and a CDT topquilt mod, but this was the most difficult, yet fulfilling project yet.
  
  

• Required Materials:

  3 yds crimson calendered 1.1 oz Ripstop Nylon
  2 yds charcoal gray calendered 1.1 oz ripstop nylon
  2 yes black calendered 1.1 oz ripstop nylon
  
  2 packages of 3.5" noseeum baffle material
  
  Crimson, black ad gray Gutermann MARA 70 thread left over from other projects
  
  Kam snap kit with black snaps and one set of long prong black snaps
  
  1 1/2 pounds 850 of down from amazon

  Related Products:

  • 0.67 oz Noseeum Baffle material
  • 1.1 oz Ripstop Nylon
  • KAM Snaps
  • KAM Snaps - Plier Kit