Here's my sleeping bag replacement for my long hikes starting in the spring. It's a quilt rather than a bag, well, it will be a quilt when I finish.
Right now, it's just instructions, a bunch of black yarn, some thread, a few yards of silver grey nylon fabric, and a big bag of polyester insulation. It's up to me to turn it into a 28F sleeping quilt.

Making Your Own Gear (MYOG) is a great way for scouts to reduce the cost of camping equipment, resulting in better, lighter gear. It's a great way to be Thrifty and self-sufficient, as well as learn sewing. Making gear can also be a great patrol or high adventure crew activity.

There are a few items, such as stoves, that aren't acceptable to be homemade in the BSA, and a few other items, like shoes, that don't make sense to MYOG. But, everything else is fair game. I hope to make my own quilt, shelter, pack, food cozy, water pre-filter, and maybe other items for my upcoming long hikes. It should cut about 60% out of my gear cost.

Sleeping quilts may be new to you - they are to me - but if you think of how a sleeping bag works, quilts make sense. You crawl into your sleeping bag on top of your pad and zip up the zipper. The insulation between you and the pad is now squished flat, resulting in no insulating effect. If you were to completely unzip your sleeping bag and lay it over you like a blanket, it would work just as well but would be way too wide.

A quilt is just like a sleeping bag except the heavy zipper is removed and the underbody portion is removed. This results in a much lighter item that lasts longer. It lasts longer because you are not constantly crushing the insulation every time you use it.

Similar to sleeping quilts are top bags which are sleeping bags with insulation only on top and a plain fabric layer on the bottom, or possibly a sleeve into which your sleeping pad fits.

This is my first MYOG project and I'll keep you posted on the results.

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