DIY No-Sew Crib Skirt

When we found out we are having a boy and I started shopping for nursery bedding, I immediately fell in love with the Indigo Summer bedding by New Arrivals:

 

I love the entire set, but we eventually decided that we did not want to use a bumper, since they are widely considered to be unsafe now, and in my opinion they serve more of a cosmetic purpose rather than a functional one - at least for infants. We will use a breathable bumper down the road when we have a rolling baby that likes to stick his limbs through his crib, but for now we are going bumper-less. So I decided I would order the crib sheet and the crib skirt until I started shopping around and realized that the sheet is a little pricey and it is also not organic, which is also really important to us. I just feel like if his face and mouth are going to be on that piece of fabric everyday, then it should be as healthy as possible. So then I was left with just buying the skirt, which would be $108 plus shipping. That seemed like a reasonable price, but then I started researching (Googling) the possibility of making a crib skirt without sewing, since my sewing machine and I have a pretty unhealthy relationship. I also have this overwhelming need to get everything I want at the absolute lowest possible price that I can - and then I feel like I have succeeded!

I eventually ran across this video from Young House Love and I was immediately convinced that I could make the skirt on my own. Since our crib hadn't arrived yet, I used the Pottery Barn website to get the dimensions so that I could order the fabric. Once I had the dimensions, I found the fabric on fabric.com for $15.98 a yard, found a 30% off coupon online, and took advantage of their free shipping on orders over $35 and ended up paying right around $35 for 3 yards of the fabric. Call me crazy, but paying $35 sounds better than paying $108 any day.

Once the fabric arrived, I basically used the same steps in the video above for making the skirt. The only difference is that instead of the hem tape, I used Stitch Witchery Fusible Bonding Web in Super Weight. I used to hem pants with this stuff in college so I know that it is reliable and holds up through lots of washing and drying.

The steps are pretty simple. First, add 3" to the length and width of your crib side measurement to allow room for the fusible web, and cut. (This is the back of the fabric)

As you can see, the sides are not perfectly straight. Cut fabric is rarely ever perfectly straight, but you can just straighten the edge based on wherever you put the fusible web. To make the hem on each side, I would rip off a piece of the fusible web that was about 1/3 as long as the side I was working on. That way, I could be more accurate in making sure it stayed straight all the way down the side, since a shorter strip is easier to work with. Once you decide where you want it, you just fold it over and iron.

 

After I finished one side, I would re-measure just to make sure that I was staying on track with my dimensions. If for some reason you still had 2 extra inches on the other end, you could just fold over more fabric and fix it that way. Once all four sides were finished, the back of the fabric looked like this:

Once you have a panel finished, you can attach it to the crib. Just like in the video, I also used velcro to attach the panels since it is washable and adjusts easily. Since velcro is sticky on both sides. I just attached it where I wanted it on the crib, and pressed the skirt panel down on the sticky edge as I went. I also used office clips to act as an extra set of hands so that the panel stayed put as I worked further down each side.

Once I finished attaching the side, the panel looked like this:

 

And then once all the panels were attached, the view looking into the crib was like this:

And here is the finished product:

We haven't bought his mattress yet, so I guess I should say that is the semi-finished product. I also wanted a longer skirt that went all the way to the floor, but obviously that is a matter of personal preference. The video suggests adding another line of velcro on the back so that you can move the skirt up as the crib moves down, but I cross that bridge when I come to it.

I really love how it turned out, and the bonus is that the total cost was about $38 (fabric + fusible web), so we saved $70 off the price that I was going to pay for the skirt online. Definitely worth about 2 hours of work in my book. This method really was so easy - I would highly recommend it and gladly do it again sometime down the road!