A Little Bolt of Life: DIY Ruffled Crib Skirt

Making a crib skirt was definitely not in my original plans. But when I saw how easy it could be on Pinterest, I decided to give it a try. I consider myself a novice sewer and was still able to do this. The key to this project is time. Nothing about it is hard, it just becomes time consuming because of all the pieces.

Materials:

3 yards of fabric - I did 1 yard of 3 different colors

Crib skirt - Try to get one at a thrift store or garage sale (spend $.70 on mine)

Iron

Sewing machine

Scissors

Lucky for me, my mom has a huge sewing table that came in handy for cutting. The first step is to cut your fabric. Since I was covering only 3 of the 4 sides of the skirt (my crib is up against a wall), I measured the long side of my crib skirt and cut my strips to be 1.5 times that of the actual skirt. This allows for gathering and creates the ruffle effect. I did the same for each of the sides. Factoring in the gathers, my measurements came to be 75 inches for the long side and 38 inches for each of the short sides (to be able to have enough fabric, some of the pieces got sewed together to make the right length). I planned to have 5 rows of ruffles which made the width of each ruffle 4.5 inches.

The next step is to take each of the strips (15 in my case) and press under on the two short sides and one long side.

Now, just sew those pressed edges to create a hem. This just gives all the edges a nice clean finished look.

Once you have sewn all your pieces, you will want to do a gather stitch on the top long edge (the side you didn't press under or sew). To do a gather, just adjust the stitch to be as long as it can be, the machine will do the rest.

Now that all the pieces are gathered, you can begin sewing them on the crib skirt. Make sure you have your pattern ready and start with the top and work your way down. To make the ruffles overlap, I pinned my next layer two inches from the previous.

Here is what it will begin to look like!

Finally, once you have all 3 sides complete you are left with a super cute shabby chic crib skirt! All you need to do is put it on the crib.

I love how it dressed up the crib just enough without being too over the top. My husband was worried it would cover up the crib, mainly because he picked it out, but turns out, he really likes it. It's nice that there isn't a bunch of dead space under the mattress.

What do you think?! Too much, or just the right amount? I was getting worried, I had too many different things and patterns going on in the nursery, but I think it helps that I used the same fabric from the valance that I made for the window.