Baffled with Baffles

[etboy]

Hi Y'all. It seems to me that all quilt baffles are run width wise, rather than lengthwise, is there a reason for this? As it would seem to me that if they were run lengthwise, you could overstuff the center baffles, and ease off a little on the other baffles as you made your way toward the edges. Thanks in advance for any reply.

[jes4kix]

There are a lot of quilts with baffles running lengthwise. I'll let someone more knowledgeable than me jump in with the pro's and con's

[boulderv7]

I made my wife's quilt this way-longitudinal baffles. She loves it.
Either way works. With a horizontal baffled quilt, you can just shake the down towards the middle if your pushing the temp limit of the quilt.

[DrPhun]

And some run diagonal.

[jes4kix]

and some Kero Step the baffles.

[Canahang]

I always felt the same way. To me horizontal baffles just give down a chance to be acted on by gravity imo. I guess that really depends on if they are stuffed correctly. But I'm in the process of making a TQ out of some Costco down quilts and I chose to go with vertical baffles

[jes4kix]

My underquilts are vertical baffles, perpendicular to my body. It seemed to me that the least useful part of a uq was the part of the quilt above my body, anything near the suspension. Down settling will happen, so my logic said, let the settling/compression benefit the underside of my body. In my mind any down settling/compression in a horizontal/longitudinal baffle will leave air space between baffles, which isn't the case with vertical baffles. Settling/compression in vertical baffles will leave air space at the tops of the baffle, above my body.

The problem I had with vertical baffles was when you affix 2 pieces of fabric together in a parallel fashion (differential cut or otherwise), as you bring the outside edges together the center compresses, the baffle collapses. You don't want insulation compression. This doesn't happen as dramatically with horizontal/longitudinal baffles. My solution was to use pre-curved (articulated) vertical baffles. I get very little if any insulation compression and my backside benefits from any settling/gravity affect of the down.