Down UQ completed! Thanks HF! (I didn't have to burn down the house)

[Frost]

So I finished my first really complex DIY project today. Many of you probably read my rant about trying to repair my old UQ, and then the effort to recover the down in it.

Well the resulting UQ for my bridge hammock was just finished about 20 minutes ago. I definitely made a few errors that will be fixed in future projects, but it looks quite usable, and ought to be extremely warm and sufficiently durable.

It's 40"x60", and the baffles run long ways down the length of it. They are 3" tall and 8" wide. This combination is the one thing I'd change when I do it over. If I'd gone across the quilt, rather than head to toe with the baffles, I think the 8" would have been fine. However, the wide baffles allow a bit more down movement than I'd really like, and also resulted in something closer to 4" of loft in the center of the baffles. Some fellow DIYers said that 3" would get me down around 15F with about 17oz of down, so I guess I'll be nice and warm for the rest of "winter" (hardly winter weather around here right now!).

There is about 21oz of down in it, and the finished weight is 35.8oz. The fabric I used was a bit heavier than ideal, but it's darn tough, and properly down proof. No idea what it is, as it was a walmart special, but it's water resistant and quite nice to work with. It's also pleasantly soft, and my new hammock will be made out of it.

I ended up using the vacuum hose trick for moving the down from my storage bag to the UQ, and it worked well. Messes were made, but with the vacuum handy, it was no sweat cleaning them up as I went and rescuing the wayward down. This quilt is built in such a way that recovering the down for future projects should be pretty straight forward, as opposed to the goat rope I had in procuring the stuff the first time.

I feel confident enough in my sewing ability (learned ALOT there on this project!) and my experience with down that I'm going to start work slowly on a 3 season TQ that I hope will be in the 35F range. That paired with my nice synthetic 0F bag and this new UQ and a GG foam pad ought to get me down well below zero.

Photos to follow when the wife gets home tonight!

On to my new Camo Sil tarp!

[DivaB]

I look forward to seeing the photos of the finished project. I know from reading your other posts that this was hell. Glad you came out on the other side

[joemcc]

Congrats! Im thinking about making a down TQ for 3 season. I have some cheap thin synthetic sleeping bag i converted for a UQ so i need a nice TQ to make up for it! Cant wait to see the pics.

[chickenwing]

I guess all's well that ends well. It is encouraging to hear this post so soon after reading your rant. I need to get busy on my quilt. Can't wait for pictures.