Cheater Crib Skirt

We are finally getting the baby room underway and with no time to spare! Baby Brown #3 will be making his appearance is just over 5 weeks. What was the hold up? Mr. Matty B wasn't wanting to give up his crib very easily. Little stinker!

So, let's talk bedding. After browsing the ol' internet for a while, I decided I liked grey and a bright blue for the colors and I jumped on board the 'chevron train'. However, since this is for our third baby, I couldn't justify spending a ton of money on a third set of bedding. In fact, John and Matthew used the same crib skirt so the only thing I did for Matthew was make him a new bumper by recovering one I found at a garage sale. Poor John didn't even have a bumper! Furthermore, we know the baby will only use the bumper for about a month or so and then we will take it out so I definitely didn't want to spend a lot of money for it to be used for such a short time. Therefore, instead of buying expensive pre-made bedding, I designed the layout, bought the material, and my sewing-savvy MIL sewed it all up for me!

Pretty dang cute, right?!



What I wanted to post about today was the crib skirt. I had seen a couple posts on other blogs about making adjustable panels. Why? Well, look at John's crib when it is at the lowest position:

See how sloppy it looks at the bottom with all the fabric hanging out? But then, when the crib is at its highest point, like it Matthew's room, you can't even see the bottom. You would never know that my MIL added a plaid trim to match the bumper because it is hidden by the crib. 

   

See what a nursery crisis we have on our hands here???

Our solution: adjustable panels to make a crib skirt! As the baby gets older and we lower the mattress, we can move the crib skirt so that it always is flush with the ground. Awesome!

I didn't take step by step pictures. If you recall, my MIL made these so I just have the final product pictures. I can however explain a little bit about these. 

-The crib skirts consists of three separate panels: a front and two sides.

-The panels are a couple inches longer than you need so they can fold over the mattress springs. 

-Once the panels were sewn, we marked where we wanted to add velcro strips so that we could velcro around the springs. The front panel has 4 sets of velcro and the sides each have 3 velcro ties.

-We made a panel for the back but the way my crib is made, it wouldn't fit right and would have been bunched up on the sides. So we decided not to use it in the end, but it doesn't matter since it is up against a wall.

-The top edges of each panel are trimmed with bias tape. Diana wanted to use twill tape because it is thicker, but Hobby Lobby was all out of it when she was there. So, bias tape it was!

You can see how we used velcro to attach to the springs. 

We attached the side panels first and then overlapped the front panel.

Although I didn't sew this, I would guess it would be very easy to sew 3 rectangles compared to sewing a full crib skirt. I love how it looks and love that I can adjust it to keep it looking pretty the whole time. 

Once we added the mattress, you would have no clue we totally cheated!

Didn't she do a fabulous job on the bumper too? To save money, she used an old quilt and batting to make the bumper fill and then covered it with the coordinating fabric. 

I happened to find the crib sheet online at Walmart for less than $10! Thanks, Garanimals! I was shocked at how well it matched the bumper.

Now that the crib is ready, I just have to finish painting the curtains and add in some wall art. Don't worry- I will post about it as I get it done! :)

Please be a fan of lil Mop Top on facebook!! I link up to these parties!