Yum. It's crisp and clean. The fabric is fun and kid-friendly without being tacky or overdone. Let's marvel at the close-up:
That, my friends, is a pattern from Amy Butler's spring collection. What nursery doesn't need a little Amy Butler?
But wait, there's more! This simple crib skirt has some tricks up its sleeves. Bedding can have sleeves, right? Because my crib is adjustable, the crib skirt has to be adjustable too. As baby gets taller the mattress platform can be lowered to offer more containment protection, which means the crib skirt has to get shorter. Yes, I could re-hem it each time, but then I can't re-use it for baby #2 further down the road.
Enter my dear friend velcro. Instead of making a traditional crib skirt that is built like a dust ruffle, we made 3 flat fabric panels - left, right and front - that are attached to the mattress platform with velcro squares. Then we added additional "receiving" velcro on the platform so I can move the panel inward, effectively shortening it without having to cut it when it's time to adjust the mattress height. So simple.
I should probably point out that I could have done this project, on my own, without a sewing machine if I used iron on hemming tape, but that isn't as durable after multiple washings. Since it's always a safe bet that anything in a nursery will need to be washed at some point, I took Brettany's advice and had her sew it for me.
Brettany, being the wonderful friend that she is, had set aside a whole day to help me sew and after the crib skirt was complete we still had plenty of time and fabric to use. The original plan was to make a crib bumper, but we realized those take a lot of work. And they might not even be necessary.* It just seemed like too much trouble for something that may or may not be purely aesthetic, so we scrapped that idea.
Not wanting my fabulous and expensive fabric go to waste, I had the idea of buying a wicker basket and creating a simple liner to turn it into a laundry hamper. So that's what we did. We picked up a Smith & Hawken basket (on sale!) from Target on our lunch/errands break and, with less than 2 hours of sewing, we had a laundry hamper in no time!
As you can see, it's nice and roomy but it's not too big for a baby-sized laundry pile. The liner bag is a 5-sided cube with just enough wiggle room to fold the top over for a nice finished edge. Plus, the liner is removable - and washable - in case we get some seriously dirty laundry going on.
And how cute is the "laundry" tag? The little placard came attached to the basket and, with no more than some acrylic paint and a tiny brush, Brettany had this labeled in only a few minutes! No, I'm not completely helpless, but her handwriting is much nicer than mine.
Here you can see my adorable hamper in its new home next to the changing table.
First I hit up the fabric store searching for fat quarters and boy was I picky! The fabrics had to be gender neutral, have coordinating color palettes, have a consistent level of "busy-ness" and all live up to my insanely high standards. In the end I found a beautiful collection of fabrics - I am loving all the ways I have managed to use pattern mixing in the nursery.
Creating this project could not have been easier. I bought 7 inexpensive wood embroidery hoops from a craft store, stretched the fabric in the hoops then trimmed and glued the fabric on the back to give it some long-term holding power. But since I can never leave an easy project alone, I upped the ante on a few of the hoops and embroidered a little something fun (more on that in a minute).
In order to figure out the spacing I moved the hoops around on top of the changing table - this was perfect because I wanted to center my composition in that horizontal space and it gave me a good reference for the vertical spacing as well.
After I was satisfied with my arrangement I stretched a level line using thread and 2 thumbtacks. I marked 2 points on the thread, one directly above each edge of the dresser, to represent the bottom corners of the dresser. This made placing my nails super easy. I measured the vertical and horizontal distances from the dresser corners then I could duplicate that spacing by measuring from my reference "corners" on the thread.
That little technique made hanging these a snap! Also, the placement wasn't an exact science so it didn't matter if I was off by a little bit. In the end it only took me about 15 painless minutes to hang all 7 hoops.
Now for the extra embroidery part of the project. To tie in some of the navy accents in the room, I bought solid navy fabric for one of the hoops knowing I would use some fun details to jazz it up. I used little scraps from the other hoops and scraps from the bunting to make this sweet little birds on a wire scene.
It's nothing fancy, just a simple french braid along my hairline. Every so often I sport this look to keep my hair off my face. I am growing out my bangs* and they are almost long enough to tuck behind my ears, but not quite. So they flop in my face all. day. long. You might also notice my lovely bedhead look. You see, when it's as humid as it is today there is no point in straightening my hair because it does whatever it wants as soon as I step outside. So I just run with it and do the scrunched, disheveled look.
*Do any of you actually wear bangs for long periods of time? Every time I get them I immediately hate them and start growing them back out.
On a side note, I just wanted to say I adore the shirt I'm wearing today. It's made of incredibly soft jersey and the color is quite flattering, if I'm allowed to say so. When I bought it, it was a very clingy, but very on-sale knee length maternity dress. A few scissor snips later and it's a less clingy, very cute maternity top. Bonus: jersey doesn't fray so it was a no-sew makeover!
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