To maintain credibility, it is important that you have knowledge of the basic materials of the trade. You need to actually find out what down consists of, and how that relates to quality.

Credibility of the manufacturer is one of the most significant things I would look for in picking a winter bag. My winter bag is made by Western Mountaineering .... which some cite as about the top of the line bag.

The list price of my bag was $445.

I also look for opportunities to have great discounts, and found one such opportunity to get .... a large discount.

I also would like light weight and good packability (small size of stuffed bag).

I would look for some way to know that the warmth rating of the bag is "accurate" or traced to some kind of objective rating. Here is where credibility of the manufacturer is important.

There are many sites with Make Your Own Gear or MYOG and Do It Yourself or DIY information on making gear. This is one such site.

I suggest that you learn how to search the site for articles and discussions about making your own sleeping bags and quilts. There are archives of postings and discussions going back to about 2002, and they are on the bottom of this page, on the right. You have substantial amounts of historical learning material right here, if you want to use it.

Hint: up in the green bar on the top of the page is a link called "Search".

You can often find such articles through Google searches as well, because Google search engine searches and indexes many web pages in discussion forums such as this one, and several others.

Some people enjoy spoon feeding newbies, others prefer to teach them how to seek information on their own. There is quite a lot out there.

I suggest that you go to :
http://therucksack.tripod.com/sewing.htm
and there you will find a lot of links to resources, as well as one of the best list of books on DIY and MYOG around.

Contact your library for getting some of these on interlibrary loan. They are mostly a little dated from the 1960 - 1980 general period when MYOG and DIY backpacking gear had some popularity. You can also search for them on used book sites such as www.abebooks.com or even www.amazon.com by clicking on the mention of books "new and used" whenever amazon gives you a display for the book title.


You can find some pictures of down feathers and down clusters if you do.... a google search.

Good luck.

Happy hunting.