I got my sewing machine from a thrift store earlier this year, played with it a bit, but never put it to work.
Now I'm going backpacking with my nephew, he needs an underquilt for his hammock, and instead of buying one, I made a rough copy of mine.
It's a little shorter, and heavier, but it's probably a little warmer too 😬
I still have to put the shock cord on the ends, so I haven't tested if it will hold its shape properly, but I think it will.
I cut up an old throw blanket that was gifted to us years ago, we never use it, and it's not pretty, so... 🤷♂️ I was gonna cut the tassels off and sew all the edges, but I ran out of gumption. I still might, it would be a weight savings, but I doubt my cuts will be clean and straight, it'll probably look worse.
Edit:
So I tested it out. I was warm at 50 degrees with no breeze, but the temp went up to 55 and a steady breeze started blowing, I definitely felt... Cool, underneath me. So I think it could be decently warm, it just needs some wind breaker material added to it to stop the breeze from sucking away the heat.
Oh for sure, I traced that thing haha. It still ended up s little lopsided, but close enough 😬
Nice! A custom top quilt would be a cool project! Did you stuff it with anything?
A built in underquilt sounds good as well, again the question of stuffing comes to mind 🤔
Yeah, the easiest thing to use for any DIY lightweight insulation is called climashield apex. Most synthetic stuffing is essentially like cotton balls, and you have to quilt it in so that it doesn't all settle in the bottom. You still end up with some settling over time within each quilted compartment, and the parts where each square is closed off becomes a cold spot unless you sew in baffles like for a down quilt. That's a lot of work, though.
Apex is a continuous filament sheet, and you buy it by the yard like fabric. It won't have an issue with settling, so there's no need to use baffles or do any seams other than the outside edge, making it really beginner friendly. There's also charts giving you rough temperature ratings for a given thickness of the insulation which is nice. I'll caveat that the ratings they list seem a little optimistic to me, so they are likely "survival" ratings not "comfort" ratings, and they assume appropriate clothing worn underneath.
This isn't exactly what i did, but its similar. Mine is wide enough to be used as a top quilt for 2 people on a sleeping pad, or to completely enclose one person. I kept mine rectangular rather than taper the bottom end like most people do.
Thanks for all the information! Maybe I'll take a crack at a version 2!