2 keyrings, mini-carabiners, or descender rings.This is what we'll be making: Step 1: Supplies The clew strands can get tangled during transport.
Untested on short quilts, but the nettles may annoy your feet.
It feels just like being in your hammock without an underquilt, except so much warmer!īut wait! There's more! The clew design doesn't need any shock cord sliding adjustments, it fits any hammock design, always works the first time you attach it, and doesn't require any helper mods like "triangle thingies" or "secondary suspensions" to make it work. With the clew design, there are no side channels to squeeze or annoy you. The natural freedom of being in the hammock by itself is lost, now replaced by the confined feeling of being wrapped in an underquilt with a shock cord across my face. In my shock-cord designed quilt, i feel like i'm in a shock-cord designed quilt. This means that no matter how you lay, the quilt is always, always, always 100% snug up against you for the entire length of the quilt.Īnother Big Deal with the clew design is that it has no squeeze or constraint. Every wiggle and squirm you make is reflected in the shape of the quilt. When both sides do this, you get a structure that exactly conforms to the shape of your hammock. Because the clew is made from small-gauge shock cord, it constantly exhibits a light pull to hug the underside of the hammock. Why this works: the lines of the clew evenly distribute "pull" across the short ends of the quilt. The clew attaches to the main hammock suspension line using a carabiner, S-hook, or simple knot. It is attached to ribbon loops on the short ends of the quilt. Clew UnderquiltsĪ "clew" is a structure made of many strands of cord attached to the end of a hammock.Ī clewed underquilt uses hammock clews made of small-gauge shock cord. Just when i think i've got it right, i realize at 1am that it isn't snug and i'm getting cold. The shock cord loop needs to be so tight that it cuts across my face or neck. I always end up with a large pocket of cold air somewhere on the underside where the quilt doesn't "hug up" correctly. I am constantly fiddling with the connection, the tightness, and the secondary suspension adjustments. This leaves it slack down the center, exactly what you don't want. Its main weakness is that there is no tug on the middle of the short edge.
I've come to the conclusion that this design is Not Good. The current trend is to add a "secondary suspension" to prevent the quilt from sliding along the shock cord loop. The short ends usually have a cinch cord.
The "traditional" underquilt is built by running a shock-cord loop through sewn-in channels down the long edges of the quilt. It snaps together! Clew Underquilts Versus Shock-Cord Loop Underquilts Traditional Underquilt Designs This solves many of the problems that "traditional" underquilts have, such as saggy air pockets, shoulder squeeze, and general fiddlyness.
This article will teach you how to make a new kind of hammock underquilt made with elastic clews. Learn how to make an underquilt with clews for ultimate snuggability.