Sewing an Adjustable Crib Skirt

Hi, friends! I hope you enjoyed the summery guest posts during these past few weeks. And a big thank you to everyone who filled in for me. Blog posts (and showers) will be here and there while we adjust to life with a newborn.

Speaking of our newborn, I was convinced she would come early. Of course she decided (with a  little help) to arrive a week late. While I was working from home during the last 3 weeks of my pregnancy, I also filled my idle time with a few projects to keep my mind off of the fact that she.wasn't.here. One project was sewing an adjustable crib skirt on her due date.
 

A crib skirt isn't necessary to bring a baby home from a hospital, but I had some free time. Plus, I didn't want to see everything stored in the drawer underneath her crib. That's the whole point of the drawer, right? After a little searching, I found a tutorial for an adjustable crib skirt since we'll eventually move the mattress down. The instructions are a little sparse, I figured I'd elaborate on them.
 

  

Materials:

• One yard of fabric
• Matching thread
• Ribbon, cut in 14 inch long strips

Tools: 

• Iron and ironing board
• Measuring tape
• Rotary cutter or scissors
• Cutting mat and ruler, if using a rotary cutter
• Sewing machine

 

 

Before starting, be sure to pre-wash, dry, and iron your fabric.

Measure your crib and the area you'd like to conceal with the crib skirt. With the mattress at the highest setting, my finished crib skirt needed to be 51.5 in. long, 24.5 in. wide, and 12 in. tall.

Add 2 inches to each of these measurements for the seam allowance.

Since the long side of the crib will be facing the wall, I only cut 3 panels:

• Two small ones for the side that are 26.5 in. long x 14 in. tall
• One large one for the front that is 53.5 in. long x 14 in. high

 

Fold in the corners, making a right triangle with 2 inch legs. Iron the fold.

Starting with one side of your panel, fold and iron the edge in 1/2 inch.

Fold and iron the other 3 sides in 1/2 inch.

Repeat by folding and ironing the four sides in 1/2 inch. The cut edges of your panel will now be concealed.

Since my fabric is slightly see-through, I snipped the exposed corner of the corner triangles. If you have solid, dark-colored fabric, this step is probably unnecessary.

Post-corner triangle snipping. It also looks more finished to me.

Measure where you'd like to tie your ribbons to the crib.

Pin the ribbons to the top edge of your crib skirt panel. Mine are sewn at approximately 10 inch intervals.

Hem the sides of each panel, being sure to sew through the pinned ribbons.

Once you've hemmed all of the crib skirt panels, tie the panels to the crib mattress support frame.

As you need to raise or lower the crib mattress, you can tie the ribbons longer or shorter to adjust the length of the exposed crib skirt.

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