The Neve Gear Waratah Quilt is an ultralight backpacking quilt insulated with 850 fill power down that comes with draft collars around the neck and foot box. Made with a silky 10d nylon shell, it has a comfort temperature rating (that’s the rating for women and cold sleepers) of -8C(18F). It’s available in multiple lengths and quite affordably priced at $249 USD. The Waratah is made by Neve Gear, a very small company located in Australia, but shipped from Texas, for US-based buyers.

• Temperature rating: -8C | 18F (comfort)
• Weight: 780g (Actual 816g or 28.8 oz)
• Insulation: 850 fill power duck down
• Insulation weight: 540g
• Shell: 10d nylon tafetta, line and outer shell
• Box Baffling: Yes
• Draft Collars: Neck and Footbox
• Compressed volume: 5.4L
• Footbox: Zippered w/drawstring closure.
• Measurements: Shoulder: 150cm, Hip: 130cm, Foot: 105cm, Length: 205cm
• Pros: Great value for the money, not drafty at all, easy to use
• Cons: No customization options

The Waratah has box baffles oriented vertically over the torso and horizontally over the footbox to limit downshift. The neck has a down filed draft collar and closes behind the neck with two snaps. You can tighten the collar with a drawstring positioned in the front above your chest.

The footbox is zippered with a drawstring closure at the end if you want to vent the footbox

The footbox is zippered from mid-calf down to a drawstring opening so you can vent your feet at night if you’re too warm. The footbox opening also has a down filled draft collar which bunches up and fills the hole when the drawstring is pulled shut. Since the foot box is zippered you can completely open the quilt so it forms a rectangle, which is handy if you want to use it as a couple or on your bed at home.

The quilt has buckles (circled in red) sewn onto interior baffles, not on the quilt’s edges.

Side drafts

Backpacking quilts can suffer from side drafts because they’re not attached to your sleeping pad and air can sneek in along the edges and chill you. This is probably the main reason why people complain that the temperature ratings of their quilts is incorrect. Several quilt companies have come up with a variety of methods for dealing with side drafts, although most quilt companies punt on the issue completely.

For example,

• Zenbivy covers the sleeping pad with a sheet that wraps over the edge of the quilt and blocks drafts.
• Warbonnet uses side elastics that keep the sides of the quilt close to your torso.
• Katabatic Gear uses “stretchy” edges to limit side drafts.
• Rock Front covers the sleeping pad with a sheet and sells quilts that zipper to the sheet, blocking side drafts.

Neve does something a little different. Their elastic pad attachment straps work like the ones from most companies: there is a loop that wraps around your sleeping pad with buckles on top that connect to your quilt. Only the buckles on the Waratah Quilt are positioned on an interior baffles, not along the edges of the quilt.

Photo: Courtesy Neve Gear

This bunches the first two vertical baffles so they lay along and under your side, thereby eliminating side drafts. It’s a weird system, but it actually works well and prevents side drafts. While you lose some of the the insulation power of those two outer baffles, Neve puts a little less down fill into them, concentrating the down over your torso and in the foot box.

Neve’s side draft system works equally well for side sleepers and back sleepers because it gives you more quilt to “stuff” under your sides to block drafts. It’s also remarkably easy to add to a quilt, even an inexpensive quilt, because it just requires sewing a buckle to the outer shell fabric of a baffle. Given its simplicity, it certainly knocks the wind out of the other approaches to solving the side draft problem. I guess the big question is whether Neve has the means to protect the idea from competitors or whether other manufacturers will copy it en masse.

Recommendation

The Neve Gear Waratah Backpacking Quilt is a reasonably priced quilt insulated with 850 fill power down that is well made and has draft tubes at the neck and in the drawstring footbox for enhanced heat retention. But the thing that sets the the Neve Gear Waratah apart from other quilts is the way its pad attachment system is configured to protect you from side drafts. Instead of connecting to the side edges of the quilt, your pad attachment straps connect to buckles in the quilt’s interior, making it easy to tuck the quilt along your torso to prevent cold drafts from chilling you. While simple in concept and implementation, Neve’s side draft protection has the potential to change the way all backpacking quilts are made in the future.

Disclosure: Neve donated a quilt for review.

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