Fleece Underquilt

[Shade-Dog]

I made a ripstop/fleece lined blanket for use while sitting in my hunting stand. I sewed the ripstop to one side of the fleece (edges and a big X across the middle). It stands up to wind and a little rain. My original was an old army blanket covered with ripstop. Fleece was lighter.

[JohnSawyer]

I have a TQ made from (out to in) Ripstop, Insul-Brite, Fleece. (really cheap, light fleece)

The TQ, I would guess is good to 45, and warms quickly... More-so than nylon inners..

Listen to Pan, he knows what he's talking about...

[Theosus]

Nice material, wrong application,

Fleece works best as an inner layer...Warmth quickly passes thru it if not sealed in by a wind layer or better yet an outer insulated garment or layer.

Fleece is also realitively heavy compared to both down and synthetic insulations....This exaccerbates the issue that a single layer of 100 weight fleece probably will not take one below 55* and that is only in a well protected windless site.

FWIW an outer wind proof layer over fleece will be both lighter and warmer than a double layer of just fleece.

Pan

If you don't want to go making a full UQ- try some M50 on the outside of your quilt for wind proofing, and then one or two layers of fleece. A think I got my M50 from thruhiker, but I used climashield inside, not fleece

[FLScouthanger]

+1 on what Pan said...

[KC8QVO]

Thanks for all the information.

I am thinking I might retire my fleece underquilt idea after this weekend. It is was a good thought, but entirely too heavy.

Here are a couple pictures:





The under quilt came out to be essentially 3 layers. My idea was to use small grommets around the edge to pass bungee chord through. The grommets did not crimp up right to the fleece for some reason so I bagged that idea. I used the crimp tool to cut holes in the fabric itself and just used the bare holes.

The material was cut in to 40" x 90" pieces. I had 18" left of each after I cut it to width so I laid the two 18" pieces inside.

Temperature wise the underquilt was very warm. This was the most comfortable I have ever been in a hammock. The weight is just not practical though.

Here is a shot of our camp site. There wasn't a flat piece of ground anywhere - it was the crappiest camp site ever. My hammock was perfect. Hangers don't need flat ground to be comfortable

[theVandeman]

I've been following this post for a while now, and I'm sorry to hear the idea didn't pan out for you as I was hoping for a success story to base my own trial on. In any event, a thought occurred to me a few days ago and that's whatI led me to this thread: what if you could supplement a summer UQ with a fleece layer to add warmth? I only considered it since fleece is relatively cheap and not terrible to work with. Again, it wouldn't be a stand-alone insulation answer, but rather an 'in addition to' piece of gear. Anybody have thoughts on this? Or would it be better weight/size wise to go with 2 UQs instead?

[1bigpaddle]

buy one precut piece of nylon for the outer layer and then place your fleece inside of that, the nylon will help with the wind. you could even spray some silicon on it to aid in that.