DIY Crib Bumpers

After making the crib skirt last week, I have been so anxious to get started on the bumpers.  I have looked and looked for tips and tutorials and some I have liked a lot, but most of those had piping on them and I honestly didn't know if I was capable of making them with piping.  It didn't look hard, but a couple of bloggers did say it was tedious.  So I just kinda ended up doing my own thing.  I did reference this blog though for certain answers to questions that arose.

I had two yards of the floral fabric I wanted to use, but didn't really have anything for the "backside" of the bumpers.  Since we live a good 45 min away from the nearest open fabric store, I hopped in the car and went to Wal-Mart.  It's not my favorite place, but it would have to do if I was going to get these bumpers done any time soon.  Our Wal-Mart does have pre-cut fabric in two yard sections.  I found a hot pink that went with the floral as best as any color that they had would.  I didn't want to use hot pink, but now that they are done, I'm so glad I went with it.  By the way, I got all of my fabric for the bedding at Hobby Lobby with the exception of the hot pink.

I'm going to try to explain how I did these the best I can, but I'm sure I'll leave something out.  If anyone would have questions (and I don't know why you be asking me, honestly) you can email me and I'll answer!

I started by measuring the crib to see how long each side needed to be.  I made 4 separate bumpers.  Some tutorials you see has them in 6 sections and a lot of store bought bumpers, like the ones we had for Lila, are just one big bumper that goes all the way around.  I liked the look best of the all the way around ones, BUT there was no way I as going to be able to make that look good, so the next best thing was 4 sections.

My crib measured 51" wide and 27" deep.  So for the front and back I needed 52" including the 1/2" seam on both ends.  For the sides I needed 28" including the 1/2 " seam on both ends.  I also knew that I wanted my bumpers to be 10" tall, so I measured 11" to include the seam.  Now, I will say that I kinda wish I would've gone with an extra inch on the width, but I'm not crying over it.  They still look good.

So I made the cuts to 8 pieces of fabric, 4 floral and 4 hot pink, a front and back for each bumper.  I ironed the fabric to make all of the nasty wrinkles, which were especially bad in the hot pink because it was wrapped so tight since it was pre-measured and put into packaging and then started pinning up the seams.

Now I'm going to tell you that I think I probably could've cut about two hours out of my project if I just wanted a regular seam with the two fabrics.  A seam like a pillow case or the one you see in the tutorial I linked above, but of course I had to make things hard.  I wanted a seam like you can see (kind of) below. So I had to (and I did learn a little bit more each time I made a section on how to make the next one a little easier.  Essentially, I had to measure a 1/2" seam 8, I'll say it again, 8 times for each section.  It got a little tiring.

Once I stitched up 3 of the four sides of the bumper, I then got out my quilt batting and eyeballed the measurements of that and then stuffed it in there.  Quilt batting was the best thing I could find to do the stuffing.  I found some memory foam type stuffing that actually looked like it could work, but it was more expensive and I just wasn't sure if it would work for me...being a first timer on this bumper stuff. 

Once I had stuffed it up, I re-pinned that side and stitched it up.  I also read in the blog above that IF she ever made bumpers again, she would use ribbon to tie them on instead of making the ties out of the fabric that she used for the bumpers.  After seeing that I was going to have to measure, cut, and stitch up 28 ties, I very quickly decided that I would just use the ribbon AND cut a few corners and just do 6 ties for each front and back and 4 for the sides.  I stitched the ribbon to the appropriate places on the bumper and that was that!  They were done!

I don't know where I saw this idea of flipping the back bumper the with the "back" facing forward, but I really liked and decided to do it and I'm glad I did.  I really like how it looks.

I feel like the stuffing may be a little scant on the front right side, but I'm not sure that I will be cutting it open and stuffing more in.  I think I'll just call it a lesson learned and see if I can tie it a little differently to make it look better.  All in all, I'm VERY happy with how they turned out.  This is the first time I've ever taken on a project like this and I'm quite proud of myself for not only finishing it, but finishing it successfully!  To see how I made the crib skirt, check out this post!