DIY Crib Skirt

I knew that I didn't want to spend a ton of money on the crib bedding this time (last time we got it as a gift from my girlfriends, but I remember how expensive it was) so I started looking into other options, i.e. making my own.  I found a couple of tutorials on Pinterest and used a really easy one that I really thought was manageable.  The title of this blog post really caught my eye and this is what I ended up going with.  I looked at it and thought, yep...I can do this!  I had three different patterns of material because originally I was going to do a ruffled crib skirt.  I have made a ruffled Christmas Tree skirt, but that was so easy using hot glue!  I knew I didn't want to use hot glue on this and I also knew that I didn't want to spend any extra money experimenting and have to go buy more material.  I wasn't confident enough in making ruffles for this big of a project.  The changing of the plan of what kind of skirt I was going to do kinda threw a wrench in my plan and I wasn't sure if the amount of material I got for each pattern was going to work.  But I just started it and got as much done as I could.

These are the three patterns I chose.  I was really excited once I finally picked them out!  I decided on the chevron stripes and the polka dots for the skirt and the floral for the bumper.

I really liked this simple style of skirt so I attempted it.  I liked the idea of a different pattern at the bottom and I did have three patterns.  I think this bedding is from Pottery Barn Kids.

I had to write my plan all out to make sure I made the cuts right and you will see later that my pregnancy brain really set in with this.  I ended up wasting some material, but that's all part of the experience, right??  :)

The top rectangle is the front of the crib and the one on the bottom is the sides of the crib.  The piece of material that I had was just short of being long enough to span the entire 53" that I needed so I ended up making that into two separate pieces, which is kind of what the picture above looked like.

So I got the two front sides all measured and cut AND pinned, then I remembered that I was going to put the polka dot material on the bottom.  (palm, meet forehead) DUH!  So then I had to take off my shoes and use my toes for the math and recalculate everything.  This is where my mom will tell you that I've never been great at general math.

I remeasured, re-cut and got everything pinned to be ready to sew.  I wasted a little material trying to get chevron stripes to match up as best as possible (another lesson learned).  Then came the easy part, the sewing!

I got so into the project that I forgot to take many pictures during the process, but most of the pictures on the blog that I got the tutorial from are pretty accurate to what I did, with the exception of the bottom piece of material with the different pattern.

I sewed up the seams on all four sides of the pieces and then got some ribbon that I had on hand and sewed those pieces of ribbon to the tops of the sections to tie them to the springs.  I think that the binder clips in the tutorial will actually work much better for my crib because of the way the springs are under the mattress.

I got the front and one side finished that night.  With the "mess-ups" that I had I think I'm going to have to go get another half yard to make the other side of the skirt, but I think it will go fairly quickly since I now know what I'm doing.  My friend Sarah gave me several of her crib sheets from her girls and I went with one that was light pink and white stripes.  Next I'm going to be tackling the bumpers with the floral material.

I was getting pretty nervous about how it would all go together but I held it up last night and I think it will look amazing!  I'm really excited about how the pinks, oranges, and yellows will pop and really "work" with the other colors I have.  Stay tuned for the DIY Crib Bumper post to come soon!  I would really like to get this finished pretty soon!