Finish It Up Friday

So happy to have crossed the second, big item off my baby sewing list- crib bumpers!  (And yes, I know the risks). 

I ordered the bumper foam on Amazon and was very happy with it. And also happy I read some reviews- one person mentioned having to trim the bumpers down in order for them to fit her crib and I had to do the same. So glad to have been warned about that before hand vs making all the bumper covers and then realizing they don't fit. Just one more reason to read those Amazon reviews!

The back bumper gave me the most trouble, but it was mostly in my head. With the solid part of the crib back there I couldn't make two separate bumpers with ties in the middle the way I had for the front. Instead I made two bumpers each with a very long tie across the back so I could wrap it around the wood panel and tie it there. That meant sewing the two bumpers into one big one too, and it took a few weeks for me to wrap my head around how to do that and have the seam inside the cover. Thankfully a few 1-2 hour wide-awake-at-2am bouts gave me some time to think and by the time I was ready to sew yesterday I had it all worked out and I'm happy to say it worked perfectly!  My only oopsie was not buying enough fabric, so one of those back bumpers is pieced with three pieces of scraps, but I figure I am the only one who will ever realize it. It is up against the crib rails and the wall, so it won't be seen. 

The baby will come home to this house when she is born, but our lease will end about 2 months later so I am keeping the decorating to a minimum. Once we get our own house there will be a very cute Anthropologie wallpaper on the wall behind her crib- I'm so excited to see my vision (eventually) all come together!

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday over at CrazyMomQuilts. 

Finish It Up Friday

Hi All!  Remember me?  Probably not, seeing as how I seem to disappear from here for weeks (ok, in this case months) at a time.  Oops!  I seem to be favoring Instagram lately, it's just so easy and convenient (@flipflopsandquiltblocks if you want to follow along on my adventures in sewing- and some kitty pics for good measure).  I have been in the sewing room though so I thought I would pop in and share what I have been working on.

With Baby Girl due to make her appearance in less than 10 weeks (eek!!) I figured it was time to get going on her nursery.  I fell in love with a floral wallpaper from Anthropologie so the color scheme for the nursery is based around that- shades of pink and mint green.  And yes, the photo below does not show the wallpaper.  Chances are good that we will only be in this home for a few more months and it is a rental, so there is no way I was wasting Anthro wallpaper here.  It will go in her real room when we get our own, real home.  Nesting did take over the beginning of January though and I had a sudden NEED to build the crib.  So with that came a few sewing projects.

First up on the list of needed items was a crib skirt-

 

I used a solid mint for the main part of the skirt and then a tonal mint printed ruffle peeking out the bottom.

As any good 21st Century sewer, I took to Pinterest before making the crib skirt and found this awesome idea of how to attach it to the crib-

 

Ribbon!  Meaning that when I lower the mattress as Baby Girl grows, I can just adjust the crib skirt instead of having it puddle on the ground or having to make a new one.

The sides of the crib turned out to be a little trickier than the front-

 

Though it may be hard to see in the photo, there is a bar that attaches to the side of the crib to support the mattress, so that messed with my plans on how to attach the skirt to the crib- I couldn't put a tie there as the bar was in the way.  And if I tied something to the bar, it might work now but it wouldn't when I lower the mattress.  Sure, I could have left it as it was, let's face it, I would probably have been the only one to notice the gap... but my OCD tendencies would not let me leave well enough alone like that.

 

Instead I attached a piece of velcro to the bar (as seen in the previous photo) and then made a small, 3" wide panel and attached it to the bar.  And yes, I even made a little ruffle to go on that piece :)  And by "that piece" I mean "those four pieces" as each short side of the crib had two bars that I had to do this to.  Yes, even the bars in the back got the treatment.  Again, I refer back to my OCD tendencies.  Figure I might as well give into them now, from what I hear babies/toddlers/kids/teenagers are all messy and will test my OCD-ness in the coming years!

Linking up to CrazyMomQuilts for Finish It Up Friday!