Will You Dream with Me: Travelers Quilt Questionnaire
I have been working on a long-time passion project of designing and creating my own outdoor gear and beginning with sleeping bags. The plan has been to build out this respective project and look for ways to make it viable. It has been a bit over a year since I started designing and making sleeping quilts for myself and my traveling friends.
From the start, I knew that it would be imperative to cut down time spent making the quilts, as costs are largely fixed until higher demands would allow for an economy of scale. I spent upwards of 20 hours making my first quilt. At first glance, it would be impossible to make them for a living as even if I paid myself €10 an hour I would have to charge €200 plus the costs of the materials. And as far as materials were concerned, I was spending around €200 a bag. I purchased only enough to make around 9 quilts for prototyping and finding ways to reduce the time spent making them. It was an amazing experience that included designing and creating a table to cut out the materials that I eventually refashioned into the desk I am writing this article on. The desk now also houses my sewing machine and an area for cutting and designing smaller pieces of stuff.
After completing eight quilts, I have finally been able to get the construction time down to around 10 solid hours of work making the dream a bit more viable, as custom made-to-order items can sell for a premium but not much more than €325–350 a bag based on my market research. However, €10 an hour is not a livable wage, not even here in Spain. However, €20 an hour would be enough to make it worth the effort.
To that end, I have made note of several of the biggest time-saving items I could introduce to streamline the production. Some of this requires programming and would also allow me to develop my programming skillset — a win-win! As I see it, there are 4 big parts to this redesign phase of my project.
Step 1: Create a questionnaire to understand client preferences and gain insights into the sizing of quilts.
Step 2: Create online submission and purchase form for potential clients to access and purchase products. This may include building a website (I would outsource this).
Step 3: Design and create an automated laser cutting table for cutting the materials and marking them for sewing.
Step 4: Connect the submission form to the cutting table to have materials cut to size for each client and marked for sewing with little intervention from me as possible.
itAs for savings, I believe the automation of this process could save on average around 2.25 hours from the overall process, but also give me time in between changing and laying out the materials to perform other required preparatory tasks. It would also add to the overall quality of the product as laser cutting helps to cauterize the silpoly-nylon ripstop and reduces fraying.
How can you take part?
If you enjoy camping and have had good and bad experiences with your sleeping set-up, please take the time to fill out the questionnaire below. There is no collection of personal information and all the data collected will help me understand what people want from a travel quilt. I would like to thank everyone willing to participate in helping me with this project. You are amazing and I appreciate your help!
