a baby space (part one).

Creating a baby room in an apartment has proved to be a tad bit more daunting than I originally thought.  Realizing we won’t be living in this specific space for many years to come, we decided it would behoove us not to paint.  As much as we really enjoyed the color in our last apartment, it was probably my least favorite thing in the world to have to unpaint all of it before getting back our security deposit.  So that leaves me with the job of creating a fun and colorful nursery, without layering on any paint or wall paper or excessive wall art.

So here is the first of a few DIY projects I’m pulling together to make a baby space worthy of my little man.  Chris and I both agree that his room has to be a place that we are comfortable spending a lot of time in.  That for us meant no cartoon character border or seizure inducing patterns.

The first hurdle is the bed.  The color pallete I chose was limey green, grey and a few splashes of blue.  Which….is impossible to find unless you want to shop at expensive boutiques which was out of the question.  Instead I just hit up etsy.com (my favorite corner of the world) and had everything I wanted custom made.  I searched and searched and searched for a grey crib sheet and skirt.  Simple request right?  Nope.  Not even close.  It even took me a month of searching on etsy to find what I wanted.  I actually had to email a seller and ask her to find me a fabric that might work.  She did.  And it was good.  She also put together a couple of blankets for me.  And they also were very good.

But then I was left with the elusive crib skirt.  Which after reading this post at one of my favorite blogs, I decided I could do on my own.  Which leads us to todays blog.  Constructing my own awesome crib skirt to match my awesome sheets.

So as you can see, we were in dire need of a crib skirt.  I feel like you can see the guts of the bed without it.  Not to mention the fact that I’m gonna wanna hide stuff under there in a bind.  You can’t hide much when you’re just letting it all hang out.  My struggle with a crib skirt is found in that they tend to be a little frilly, which didn’t really mesh with the rest of the feel in the room.  So I knew I wanted something sleek, not matchy-matchy, and kind of unnoticed.

So I headed to the fabric store, bought about two yards more than what I needed of a fabric I felt would match the grey theme without being “fluffy” as I like to say.

That’s it on the far left.  See how well it meshes?  Yeah I rock.

I measured and cut and pinned and started hemming.  And by hemming I mean “stitch witchering”.  And if you don’t know what that is, I blame your mother.  Also, yes I watch back episodes of House illegally online while I get crafty.  I feel it stimulates my brain function and causes me to be more accurate and focused.  And it keeps me from talking to myself.

I cut out 5 panels.  One for the front, two for the sides, and two for the corners to avoid a stretched or pulled look.

Sorry for the out of focus shot, but you get the gist.  One pack of fabric fusion velcro, one stick back.  The sticky back is used on the crib.  Fabric fusion on the skirt.  When you are done you will have half a box of each without their matching counterparts.  That’s the price you pay for playing the velcro game.

Put it all together and what do you got?  A really great hiding place.  Well…when I drop the mattress down to a big boy level, the skirt will be more likely to hide his junk.  For now it just makes the bed look a little more pulled together and less empty.  (refer back to the start of this post for a comparison….it really is much better).

Also, because I am doing this room on the cheap, I’ll be keeping a running tab of what it’s costing me to do all of these fun projects.  So to get us started:

Custom crib sheet: $32
Custom blankets: $38
Fabric for skirt plus supplies: $27
Crib: $199 (gift from blessed in-laws)

I also started working on my DIY chalkboard and tons of organization this weekend as well.  I’ll save all of that for future posts.  Although now that the ball is rolling it’s gonna be tough to not show you everything as it’s happening.  I have so many ideas but I want to get it done before I actually turn into a whale and become incapable of moving my extremities.

It shouldn’t be too much longer now.