Adding down to S2S Ember II quilts

[Trundlers]

Hi Brains Trust,

We have some Sea to Summit Ember II quilts that have always seemed a bit light-on with the regards to the down fill. Even when fully lofted there are patches in the baffles where there is very little down present (even with shaking/shuffling to try and even it out a bit). This has lead to some rather cold nights on the track.

I am toying with the idea of adding some down to the quilts (a fiddly job and it's going to drive me crazy but I am prepared to do it). I am just toying with how much down to actually add to each quilt. The quilts are the large size. Would 100g of fill extra per quilt be about right? or should I aim for 150g as these are the large quilts?

We have used these quilts on 2 walks - OLT in 2019 (snow in January) and Larapinta in 2021 (it was unseasonably warm on the track). We do have down sleeping bags but are leaning more to light weight kind of set up as we get older.

Suggestions on best way forward appreciated.

cheers

Trundlers (in Qld)

[Moondog55]

Having added 100 grams to a Large S2S Traveller if I were to do it again I would aim for 200grams addition.
I got it done at Remote Repairs and they did a reasonable job

[Trundlers]

Thanks Moondog. Think we will aim for 200g down per quilt of additional down.

[andrewa]

From recollection of the last quilts I made…..

The shell was about 250g, the rest was down. 250g down was good for my summer quilt, and 350 for snow camping (wearing down clothing). I think I put 15-20g of down in each baffle.

With energy, you may find a link in here about my MYO quilt and how to fill each baffle easily, but basically it was to take a cardboard tube, put a removable down resistant mesh cover on one end, with some sort of attachment to a vacuum cleaner; weigh the tube and attachment, suck down into the tube with the vacuum cleaner, and work out the required amount of down; put tube through an appropriate sized hole in the baffle seam; remove vacuum cleaner attachment and mesh cover from tube, and use some sort of plunger arrangement to push doe well in to baffle; pin baffle closed and goon to next one.

Beauty if this system is that you can chuck the down in a plastic container, and suck out what you need, plus any stray stuff that’s floating around the living room. No mess! Way better than my attempts at hand stuffing 30yrsago.

[Trundlers]

Thanks andrewa. Will use your tips when adding the down to the quilts as I had visions of down flying everywhere!

[Trundlers]

As an update, I am currently 1/3 way through the adding down to the quilts project. It's a bit messy {down is messy to work with} but the baffles are better filled when the down has lofted and I am hoping the quilts will be warmer when I finish the project.

To do this project, I am carefully unpicking short sections of the stitching at each baffle, then filling with some down, and then carefully hand stitching each baffle closed. The down is 'recycled' from a cheap down sleeping bag I purchased a couple of years ago from Aldi. I think it's duck down, and the S2S Ember quilts might be goose down.

[Moondog55]

I'm interested in how that quilt ended up.