One of the first inspirations I had for Emma’s nursery came in the form of vintage bedskirts I found at Austin’s City Wide Garage Sale. I’ve talked about this show before, and you may remember that it’s more a vintage and collectible show than it is a “garage sale.” In the piles and piles of old linens that one vendor always carries, I found white bedskirts edged in lace and crocheting for $4 each, so I bought four of them to turn into Emma’s new cribskirt.
I also used some pre-made curtains that I cut up for the brown layer in between the white (the curtains were cheaper to buy than it would have been for me to buy the actual fabric yardage).
I needed to piece together the bedskirts and curtain panels to fit the crib. I simply made three panels in each fabric (one for the front and two for the sides – I didn’t worry about the back of the crib, since it would never be seen) that were about 2.5 times the length of each side. I made the height of each panel exactly the same – 19 inches. It was enough for a few inches to tuck under the mattress and the rest to hang down and just touch the floor.
After I had my panels pieced together and hemmed, I ran them through the ruffler on my sewing machine. If you don’t have a ruffler and have some extra money lying around, you should TOTALLY get one. I used to pull all of my ruffles by hand, but that was just too much work for the length of each of these panels. I would marry my ruffler if could. Anyway, after the fabric panels were ruffled, there were just about the length I needed for each side of the crib.
I found this genius idea to make your skirt panels with ties on the top so that you can just tie them onto the mattress frame for easy adjustment. I love this idea, because there’s nothing I hate more than a cribskirt that drags on the floor once you have to lower the mattress when the baby gets bigger. Zack’s cribskirt was too long once we had to lower his mattress, and it drove me crazy!
But, here’s where I got completely lazy. Instead of sewing all of those little ties onto the top of my panels, I used safety pins and ribbon that I already had on hand. I just pinned a length of ribbon onto the panels and tied it to the mattress frame. I started with my bottom layer, and tied it so that the bottom of the skirt just touched the floor.
Then, I took the 2nd layer (my brown layer) and did the same thing, tying it a little higher so that the lace from the bottom layer just peeked through.
It looks like SUCH a mess, I know, but you can’t see that when the mattress is in the crib.
Then, I did the same thing with the top layer, again tying it a little higher so that the brown layer just peeked out from the bottom.
Now, I have a tiered, ruffled cribskirt that can be easily adjusted and took very little time to put together. Go me!
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I’m very excited to announce the winner of the Xpresiv Designs vinyl giveaway! Our winning commenter was #52, Megan from Motherhood Unedited, who said:
Today’s Moments are Tomorrow’s Memories and always remember to kiss me goodnight for my sons room.
Awww, so sweet! Congrats, Megan!
In case you aren’t Megan, Aimee is offering a fabulous 20% off code for Living With Lindsay readers! Just enter LINDSAY at checkout for your discount. Thanks, Aimee!