Earlier this week, I shared how I made the no sew chevron curtains in Easton’s nursery using Premier Prints Zig Zag Blue Twill fabric. I had a bunch of fabric leftover and I wasn’t too happy with the crib skirt that came with our DwellStudio for Target bedding…

Not only was I not really feeling the stripes, but the skirt looked sloppy and was impossible to keep straight.

I remembered seeing a tutorial for a no sew crib skirt over at Young House Love, so I decided to make one. Easton was overdue and it was one of those completely random, on a whim projects. Thankfully it only took a couple of hours one afternoon.

I pretty much made up my own rules with this one. I decided to make 3 separate panels for the skirt– one on each side and one across the front. I figured since you’ll never see the back, there was no point in making that panel. To keep things simple, I used the measurements from the crib skirt I already had and determined that I needed two 25″ x 10″ panels and one 51″ x 10″ panel. I added about two inches to those measurements and cut some panels.

Then, like the curtains, I just ironed on some no sew hem tape for each edge.

Once again, you can see my wonderful cutting skills. I cannot cut straight for the life of me, but as long as the hem fold is straight, it’s okay.

Once I hemmed all 4 sides, I was left with this.

When I started the side panels, I made sure that my zig zags were going to line up.

I just marked the top and the bottom with a disappearing marker and pinned them before ironing and hemming.

I realized after the fact that this step was unnecessary. Because the crib has fairly thick, solid legs on each corner, you don’t see where the fabric meets. Plus I kept my 3 panels completely separate, so they never touch and are never seen.

I now had 3 separate hemmed panels. I marked each one so that all of my hard work was not in vain (though it sort of was, see above line).

Then I had to figure out how to get these on the crib. After browsing the velcro aisle at Michael’s, I came home with these two packs of velcro.

I got one pack of Fabric Fusion velcro to adhere to the panels I just made. Then I got one pack of Sticky Back velcro to adhere to the actual bed frame. I cut small pieces of the Fabric Fusion velcro loop side and ironed it across the top of each panel, placing a piece every 8 inches or so.

Then I cut the opposide side of velcro, the fuzzy side, from the Sticky Back velcro.

To make sure it was the same size as the pieces I ironed on, I stuck the pieces together first then trimmed them.

Then I had panels with velcro at the top that just needed to be adhered to the crib.

I peeled the paper off of the Sticky Back side and stuck it onto the metal frame of the crib.

After all 3 sides were adhered, the crib looked like this…

The great thing about velcroed panels is that they are easy to remove to adjust or wash. There’s no need to remove an entire mattress just to fight with the skirt.

Once the crib was all made, I loved this new skirt so much more than the cookie cutter one that came with the bedding.

It adds such a cleaner, more modern look to the room that incorporates the curtain fabric from the other side of the room. The skirt also looks great without the bumper so it will only grow with Easton. That was our goal in creating this nursery from the beginning, giving Easton a space that he can grow into 🙂

Update! February 13th, 2013

I’m entering this project I did while super pregnant and too tired to adjust my camera settings into East Coast Creative’s Creating with the stars competition. Worth a shot, right? 🙂

Finally, a post on those nursery curtains! We’ve been a little hectic around here the past two weeks… no, not just because we have a newborn. Mike mentioned that his side of our walk-in closet system collapsed when Easton was a few days old, so Mike has been spending all of his spare time spackling, painting and installing that. Then there was the broken AC and the broken microwave (yeah we didn’t tell you about that one), then we both caught colds. Needless to say, we haven’t had much time to blog, but I’m trying to get back into a routine.

So anyway, while I was waiting for Easton to arrive in those final days, I was able to complete the chevron curtains I’d been planning. It only took me a few hours and was incredibly easy. As you probably guessed since Easton is a boy, we went with this nursery color scheme..

It’s crazy how close to these colors the final product ended up being! I ordered the navy chevron fabric from OnlineFabricStore.net, it’s Premier Prints Zig Zag Blue Twill and you can order it here. I believe I ordered 10 yards at the time because I was originally planning on making additional panels for the closet. It came in this gigantic roll…

The roll is 54″ wide. Since our window is only 36″ wide, I knew I could cut two panels out of the width and still be able to pull them closed. All I had to figure out was the length, which was easy enough.

I laid the fabric on our family room floor to cut it, which was insanely hard being overdue pregnant, but I managed to crawl around to make cuts.

I made sure that when I measured, I left about an additional two inches around each edge to be sure to have enough room to hem. Young House Love has a more detailed tutorial on no sew curtains, so I won’t reinvent the wheel here 🙂

Then it was as simple as cutting some iron on hem tape the length of my seams, peeling the paper off and ironing the one side on… (done on our island with a towel so that I didn’t have to fight the fabric on a thin ironing board)

Then folding the fabric over to create the hem, and ironing over the tape again to adhere the other side. These directions are all on the no sew tape, which was Heat n’ Bond I picked up at Michael’s.

You can probably see that I can’t cut a straight line for the life of me, which is okay just as long as your fold is straight. I did all four sides like this, for 2 panels. Also, for a pattern like chevron, you want to make sure your zig zags are going to line up when you hang them. Both of my panels were cut from one strip of fabric so it was easy, I just had to make sure my top and bottom fold overs were at the exact same part of the zig zigs on each panel. That way, when they’re completely closed in the nursery, they will look like one continuous piece of fabric, all nicely lined up.

For the curtain rod, we picked up this inexpensive silver one from Target with some matching clips. I think the rod was literally less than $10 on clearance. We needed something not so bulky since the right side of it would be very close to the corner.

When deciding how many clips to use, I just started by putting one each on either end of the panel, then I filled in the middle until I thought there were enough, but it wasn’t too crowded. I ended up with 5 on each panel.

They were really easy to make and took about 2 seconds to hang. I thought I’d have to fight them a little more to get clean pleats, but not at all!

The curtains even made it into Easton’s newborn photos, in one of my favorite pictures ever. How well does this sum up our lives?

(image courtesy of S18 Photography)

Yes that’s Darwin’s butt, my cats even photo bomb on a professional level. Darwin loves his baby brother and follows us around wherever we carry him.

I loved the way the curtains turned out so much that a few days later, I decided to make a matching crib skirt out of some of the remaining fabric. I’ll be sharing that soon, as long as the baby’s nap schedule permits 🙂

ps- be sure to check out our daily Easton pictures over at Macky & Co!

Confession: I love chevron. Many people think is a trend or played out, but I have yet to put it anywhere in our house and I’ve been itching to. What better choice than the nursery?

I started this weekend, with one of these green and white chevron storage bins from Target…

(via I Heart Organizing, because it’s not available on the Target website and it’s dark out and we have no light in the baby’s room :))

We have some small stuff we’ve received for the baby and I wanted a place to keep it all. I picked up one of the green bins pictured above for now, plus 2 blue ones for our laundry room (which I have yet to load with stuff). I also have 2 of the clear plastic containers from this line holding some non-maternity tank tops and what not I’ve grown out of in our closet. I like the clear ones in the closet because I will eventually need them again and I can easily see what each one is holding. Anyway, back to the chevron talk!

I’m not sure if the green bin will go with what we’ll end up doing in the nursery, but I figure it’s versatile enough to throw in the playroom or another room if it doesn’t work out. For now, it’s perfect to help me feel organized, but I do know I plan on using some sort of chevron in the room… most likely in the form of curtains.

I have long had a love of chevron curtains. I feel like they’re perfect for a baby’s room, as they’re classy and stylish with a hint of fun.

(from Flickr via Pinterest)

(from Castle Creek Designs on Etsy via Pinterest)

(from Remodelholic via Pinterest)

I’m planning on buying some fabric and making my own, either by breaking out the sewing machine or using no sew tape and curtain rings. I want a smaller scale chevron, so painting would be tedious. Plus there are so many great chevron fabrics out there that I can’t really go wrong! Premier prints are some of my favorite patterns…

(via Fabric.com)

(via Fabric.com)

(via Fashion Fabrics Club)

(via Fabric.com)

We decided to forgo making our own cribskirt and instead went with a bedding set, so I feel like I need to add in a good mix of other fabrics to make the room look less matchy matchy. Plus the baby isn’t going to be using the bumper or the comforter, so in reality, if the cribskirt isn’t working for us, it will be easy enough to change out. Therefore, I don’t want to marry the rest of the room to the bedding, since it will be grown out of so quickly and can be so easily changed. As Mike told me, we shouldn’t make the room too “baby” since we want a room the baby will grow into… and they’re only babies for so long ::sniffle::. I figure some bold, yet simple chevron is a good way to make the room last longer!

ps- Mike spent last weekend and half of this week in San Francisco, so we didn’t have any nursery progress to share this week 🙁 But we’re anxious to get back to work this weekend! Aaand I may have already ordered some fabric samples…