I finished my first quilt a few weeks ago and just looking at the finished product I named it The Thing. Ugly as sin would be its tag line. I learned a decent amount on the first sewing attempt and will learn a lot more as I continue to use it this summer. I have started working on designing its better sibling or replacement if at the end of the summer I decide to harvest the down out of it becuase The Thing is considered useless. Anyways, in the process of working on the new design I am thinking about materials. I made this first one out of the kelly green group buy fabric and that fabric is great as a liner but just not windproof enough for a shell.

The two ideas I have are:

Cuben liner, cuben baffles, m50 shell

Or all m50

My questions are:

1. I have never worked with cuben, what is the general consensus on cuben against the skin?
2. The point of cuben on the inside would be to have a vbl for sleeping. Any experience with vbl quilts in the temp range of mid 20's to mid 40's?
3. What cuben would people recommend .34 oz or .51 oz? If .51 it really doesn't seem worth the added expense of cuben vs m50 unless I can really justify the vbl.

can I ask how the Thing is "useless"? I mean, who cares what it looks like, and unless you only stuffed every other baffle, or there is a huge hole in the middle, how could it be useless?

Personally, I wouldn't be able to handle cuben on my skin for any reason, especially sleeping gear. But that's just me. I've seen a good bit of full cuben quilts out there, so somebody has got to be using them. I do know that the .34 cuben gets quite soft after using it for a bit or a pass through the washing machine. I can't help you with any of your other questions though.

I don't care about form either in the woods, functionally speaking the quilt needs a hood to cover my head on colder nights, the foot box is only some velcro, I was trying something out and it didn't really work how I wanted it to, and the down doesn't stay in place. I karo stepped the quilt and I think with the amount of down I put in it the spacing is too far apart. The quilt isn't completely worthless but I am debating on taking it apart to salvage a little less than $90 in down and starting over. It wasn't a complete fail, I learned alot about what not to do on my next quilt.

The fact that the .34 cuben softens up after some use isn't a bad thing, that might make it feel a little better against the skin. I really need to find out about the durability of the .34. I read on the zpacks website that a very brave and gentle person could make a tarp out of .34 oz cuben. I feel like if that statement could be made then it should handle the shell of a quilt.

I did some testing of CT0.3K.08 on a tensometer a few years ago and was shocked at how tough it is. A 1" wide strip required 11 pounds of force to snap in tension. I wouldn't hesitate to make a quilt out of it on the grounds of toughness. You could always check with Steve at Suluk46. He has had a CT0.3K.08 quilt for years now and should be able to give you quality insight as to its durability as a quilt liner.