Angora Down Duvet

This is something I made a couple years ago and still get people asking me for details on how it was made. If you would like to make one of these for yourself, here is how I did this. I made this duvet as a gift for my parents and they have been using it all year round and loving it. This is a wonderful way to use up any short clippings from your angora or to make something from your angora wool if you do not know how to spin it into yarn. 

I started out by making a few tiny test sized pillows stuffed with various amounts of fiber of different lengths. I put those through a few washer and dryer cycles to see how they would fair. The ones with longer fiber did end up felting and creating various clumps which would have made the end product unusable. However the ones that were filled with finely shredded wool did just fine. So the key to making this project last long term is to use wool which ideally is around half an inch in length, up to an inch. At this length the wool turns into a soft and airy cloud which can be compacted and stuffed but is too short to felt together. I called this angora down as it very much resembles goose down. 

When I started this project, I already had a couple bins of wool saved up to do something with. Most of it was was longer wool and as such, all of it had to be resized. I took tufts of it and shredded that with scissors, bit by bit by bit. This took a very long time and my hands still hurt just thinking about it. If you are going to do this project, I highly recommend shearing the wool short directly off the rabbit specifically for this. It will save you much pain. Once I worked my way through the initial wool cache, that is what I ended up doing going forward. I sheared all my rabbits every 2-3wks to collect boxes of angora down. 

I used a white cotton duvet cover to make the outer shell. I simply removed the zipper closure. I borrowed my mom's sewing machine, figured out how to use it, and got started. I don't have much sewing experience other than making some fun projects as a kid, so if I can do this, so can you. Having a large flat working surface is extremely helpful to lay things out. In my case I used a dining table. 

First I laid out the duvet cover, made sure it was evenly flattened out and squared. Once perfectly flat, I used fabric clips to maintain that shape, and using a large ruller and a sharpie marker I marked a grid pattern on the fabric. I made small dots with the marker, those dots were later covered over with the stitches. My grid pockets were roughly 20x20cm each.  

I started from the head end of the duvet and gradually worked my way towards the foot end. Throughout the process the duvet had to be rolled tightly in order to fit inside the sewing machine but it did fit. I didn't bother taking pictures of the entire process so instead here are some illustrations to help you visualize. 

I started by sewing a few feet all of the vertical lines. I used a wide and tight Z stitch pattern, I'm sure it has some appropriate name. I wanted something that will stand out for some visual appeal and will ensure that the wool in each pocked stays in its own pocket and can't migrate around. It's more convenient to make these tunnels of future pockets longer but don't make them too long so that it becomes harder to stuff that far end with the wool. 

At first I was just using my hands to stuff fist fulls of the angora down into these pockets but quickly found this to be rather inefficient. Finely chopped angora wool has a tendency to want to fly out of your hands and grab on to the cotton fabric all the way to it's final destination then it wants to cling to your hand as you're pulling your arm back out. This stuff is so light that the slightest air movement makes it want to explode all over the room so when you're done with the project for the night and want to put a lid back on the box filled with this stuff, do so slowly. I ended up using a Ziplock tupperware container both to measure out the amount of wool I was putting into each pocket and to deliver it there. I used a kitchen scale to fill the cup with 2oz of the angora down. That worked out to be roughly a full container when lightly compacted. I would insert the container into the pocket tunnel, pushed it through to the end, then would simply shake the contents out. Once the entire row of pockets was filled, I would run the duvet through the sewing machine horizontally to close the row and restart the process of making the next row. When I got near the end of my vertical rows, everything was rotated so I could add a couple more feet of stitching to extend the rows. Rinse repeat until you get all the way to the end. 

Here is a picture of the duvet being past the half done mark with just a few more rows to go. 

This was a queen size duvet. Google says those measure 88x90 inches, or 225x230cm. I do remember my pockets were roughly 20x20cm each so that's a grid of roughly 10x10 with majority of the pockets were filled with 2oz of wool. That would mean I ended up using somewhere around 200oz or 3.2lbs of wool for this project. 

If you end up doing this, I would love to hear how it worked out for you!