kids TQ/SPE idea

[bwtruitt]

I was thinking last night that it would be easy for me to get some cheap lightweight Walmart fabric and a yard of climashield from AHE and make a more effective sleeping bag/TQ for my children.

Basically I would make an appropriately sized segmented pad extender for the bottom (maybe 1 foot wide pad slot with 4 inch extensions? Not sure, hard to measure kids while they are bouncing off the walls...) The SPE would be sewn on one side and the bottom to a, say 2 foot wide top quilt. The other side of the quilt would velcro or zip onto the other side of the SPE.

I would probably only have the pad pocket open at the foot ends w/ a velcro flap or some such to keep the pads in place. Oh! And why not sew on a small pillow at the head end and stuff it with climashield scraps?

For reference, my kids are circa 5 and 3 years old .

(Also note that I enjoy misusing the word "circa".)

The advantage of the SPE bottom would be that they can sleep on the ground or in a hammock (and have the bottom pads wrap around them). I may also put in some extra velcro so you could kind of "close up" the 4 inch extenders on both sides if they weren't in use.

I'm unsure of the dimensions exactly, but that's the general idea anyway. This isn't exactly a new idea, I'm sure, but I guess what hit me was that I could do it for about $30 per child probably. I also like the fact that it would be hard for them to roll off of a pad and that sort of thing. I could be fairly confident that they would be toasty warm.

Another idea just came to me. The TQ could be completely removable so that you could alternately attach a 2.5Oz climashield TQ instead of the 5.5 or 6 Oz. Put in various thicknesses of pad on the bottom and you could have the summer version, 3 season version, and put on both TQs and a thicker bottom pad and have a 4 season version. Or just make a TQ with a double layer of the 6Oz climashield...

The seams between SPE and TQ could/will leak heat, so I'd need to overlap the 2 by some amount....

I need to collect my pennies....so much to do. So many ways to nickel and dime my bank account to death