Synth Sweater 1.1

This is a loose fill synthetic version of our SUL sweaters, with a calculated loft of 1.1. It is a compressible, wet weather capable, warm, puffy sweater. I would estimate the insulation level to be similar to our .75 down sweaters, but with exceptional moisture resistance. It’s also similar to the insulation level of 2.5oz/yd2 Climashield APEX.

6.7oz – small, collar (approximate)

7.3oz – small, hood (approximate)

Our Climashield APEX garments have filled this roll, and will continue to be available. However, there are a few issues with APEX, and other batting style insulations.

• Climashield APEX, specifically, does not contain any recycled content. 100% virgin polyester. I’m sure there are reasons, but in this day in age, recycling some of the mountains of plastic we produce, just seems like a very basic, responsible thing to do.
• Any batting style insulation inherently will have a lot of pattern cut off waste since you’re cutting shapes out of a sheet
• Climashield APEX (and many other synthetic insulations) do not compress well. This isn’t a big deal for small items, but when you get into garments, and especially into sleep systems, APEX can be downright huge.
• Due to the bulk issue above, the total amount of insulation you can build in is often limited. Partially because of the finished bulk, but also because that bulk makes production really difficult as you try to wrestle sewing through multiple layers.

It has taken me a long time to crack the code on the best fill specifications for this loose fill, but once I did, it made all of those aspects look a lot better.

• It is 100% recycled.
• There is zero production waste from production. We only use what we need.
• It compresses significantly smaller than APEX. It’s probably closer to down, in compressed size, than to APEX, but still larger than down.
• Since we aren’t sewing through bulky layers, we can scale it up to whatever insulation level we need. There is a limit to how low it can go, due to control and coverage, but it allows us to make warmer synthetic items than we previously could with APEX.

Test samples have faired very well under long term compression, with little loft loss compared to APEX, which tends to lose a noticeable amount early in its use life. That said, more long term testing and real world use is needed to really determine its long term performance.