Originally Posted by
fuzz2050
Well, ideally a quilt should be wide enough that that you can roll over without loosing all your heat. If your quilt is too narrow, that certainly can happen, and it does suck. All the more reason to get a nice wide one, you're already loosing weight swapping from a sleeping bag, so get a really wide one.
As far as Sport10y's question, the end with snaps forms a box for your feet, you sleep on top of your pad (some people include a liner for comfort), and you cinch the top around your neck. In very cold weather, a quilt should be supplemented with a beanie or a balaclava.
I've used a jacksRbetter Hudson River quilt with wings a few years and always had cold draughts when I rolled over. Quilts are ok in mild temps. but i find that you have to do as much as possible to make them into sleeping bags to stay warm in the cold. Getting a bigger quilt so you can get down around as much of you as possible starts to defeat the supposed advantages of quilts. If you sleep on you side there's not much area underneath you and you need down all around you to stay warm. The neck area is another area where quilts can let the cold in and pulling it over your head is a bad thing to do in the cold as the last thing you want is all the water vapour from your breath inside the quilt. So a hood is a big advantage.
A good UL bag will be a few oz heavier than the same rated quilt, but my experience is it's more comfortable too. I just bought a Montbell UL Super Spiral Down Hugger #3. It's rated to 30F and weights 22oz. The material is 15 denier ballistic nylon and is a lot softer than the jacksrbetter nylon. The fill zip means it can be a quilt in warm weather and I can roll around in it and never have draughts or bits on me that aren't covered by down. The best thing about the bag is it stretches so there are no cold air pockets and I can move my arms and legs around a lot. I usually don't like mummy bags as I feel confined in them, but the Montbell gets around that issue pretty well.