I have a 6 month old baby girl. And I spent all last summer getting ready for her. My husband and I decided I would be pausing my teaching career to be a Mommy, so we had to learn to live on one income. But again, we were trying to get our home (and minds) ready for a baby. So how in the world did I prepare a nursery on a budget?! I made things, that's how.
But I'm not going to fib. Part of the reason I made most of the things in her nursery is because I knew exactly what I wanted and if I couldn't find it in the stores or online, I was going to make it. I told my husband I was saving us so much money (which is true), but mostly I didn't want him to know how much of a perfectionist Mommy I was turning in to.
Bedding.
That word alone caused me great stress. For starters, my husband and I were waiting until the birth to find out the gender of our Little One. So when looking for bedding for the nursery, I had to stick to neutrals. Which is so boring. But grey. Grey, you see, is making a come-back. Speaking of, is it grey or gray? I really don't know. Perhaps I'll alternate the spelling so that I give each a fighting chance.
Anyway. So I get on Pinterest and search gray nurseries and SO MANY cute ideas popped up. Then I got on Google Images and did a search. Equally many popped up. You might say I had become obsessed with it. That's good! Right? Because I was getting lots of ideas. But as I clicked here and there and looked at the bedding, my mind filled with dread of paying hundreds of dollars on a bedskirt and a quilt. And then there was the talk of bumpers.
"They're dangerous for babies."
"No they aren't. If a baby can roll into them, then that means they're capable of rolling away from them."
All this sounded like a good excuse to avoid buying bumpers until later.
But I still needed a bedskirt and a quilt or little blanket/comforter of some kind. And honestly I knew exactly what I wanted and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE.
So I got back on Pinterest (a recurring theme with me, you'll find) and searched for a DIY crib bedskirt. And I was pleasantly shocked to see how inexpensive and easy this would be! Excellent! I used this tutorial (by Splash of Something) and also just kinda winged it. Afterall, you're essentially getting four rectangles, hemming them, and sewing them together. How hard is that?!
I'll pause here to say I'm no sewing expert. Though I wouldn't call me a novice either. My mother taught me to sew when I was younger. I took Home Ec and made me a sweet pair of cotton shorts. My grandmother bought me a sewing machine when I got married. Up until now I've used it to adjust the size of dress pants and maybe hem a thing or two. But I'm not really a perfectionist on the machine. I couldn't care less about straight lines or matching thread or tension or any of that stuff. I just sew. And if I screw it up, well, that's what seam rippers are for.
So my first task is to figure out how much fabric I needed. So I took my 7 month pregnant behind into the nursery and measured. I measured from the ground to the bottom of the mattress holder thingy and then across the length of all the sides. We bought a white Jenny Lind crib and I couldn't wait to get it "dressed"!
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| Check out the baby bump & sneakers there! |
As you can see from my informative photo, it was 8.99 a yard and then 30% off. This was the summer of 2013 so prices may be different now. What I did was go all over town and take pictures of the fabrics I liked. Then I used a handy photo editing app on my iPhone to add the prices. When I got home, voila! I had a little photo gallery of fabrics to ponder while resting my pregnant derrière.
I couldn't find a gray striped fabric at any of the stores around here. So I went to fabrics.com and found it there!
Once I got all my fabric, I was overwhelmed with cutting it. In fact, that was my least favorite part. For starters, I was hugely pregnant for crying out loud. And this required me to lay out all the fabric on the floor and crawl around cutting it. Plus I hate the pressure of cutting straight lines on such large pieces of fabric. I used old fashioned scissors (though I should have used a rotary cutter) and a tape measure. And I'm certain all my lines were crooked. But I don't care. And I knew Little One wasn't going to turn its nose up at my cutting job. Wait, right?!
I then decided that I wanted something in between the fabrics. I found some Bias Tape Cord Piping (I have no idea what each of those words mean alone in reference to sewing much less strung together) at Wal-Mart and decided that would do the trick!
I pinned the fabrics together with the piping in between & then sewed! I then hemmed all the sides.
I wasn't sold on the idea of sewing all 4 sides together like a real bedskirt. A crib's bedskirt will change as you lower the mattress. Why would I do more work that's only going to be a nuisance later on? So I found this fabulous idea.
And did it! Only I decided against the ribbon and went with paper clips. Yep, paper clips. And why not? They make great hooks. And I have a billion of them around here.
I just snipped little holes in the fabric every so often and slipped a paper clip through. My husband frowned when he first saw them, but he's over it now. Here in a few months when we have to lower the mattress and I have to pull the bedskirt up, there will be no frowns!
Anyway, this was SUCH an easy project. I could have made it even easier on myself and only done one fabric, but again with the whole "I-know-what-I-want" mentality that I've got going. I'm so pleased with the outcome.
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