Guest Post: How to Make a Bedskirt out of Curtain Panels

I have my favorite guest poster to share with you today.  Why is she my favorite?  She's my one and only SISTER!  I've been begging her to share some of her craftiness and now that she is home on maternity leave, she finally has a little spare time.  My sister is the creative and crafty one.  She taught herself to sew just about anything and later attended Parsons School of Design and FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York.  Gina doesn't have a blog, but I'm hoping to occasionally share more of her talent here.  Here's her first-ever blog post!

Hi I'm Suzy's sister, Gina. I live in a 2-bedroom apartment in New York. I thought I'd help my sister with a guest post, due to her recent finger injury! Although her finger injury does not seem to be slowing her down much.

My husband and I had a baby in February and with all of the baby stuff in our apartment, we had to start storing stuff under the bed in bins. I had to raise the bed onto bed risers in order to fit the bins under the bed, and I did not like how this looked. Enter the idea of a bed skirt! But h how I hate how traditional bedskirts get all bunched up and generally look a mess. I recently made a super easy bedskirt for the baby's crib so I thought I'd make a similar one for my bed.

Here's her cute baby, Tre.

Gina made all of the bedding herself.

I was planning to use some fabric I had around the house or a set of sheets, but none of the fabrics I had were heavy enough to completely hide what was under the bed. In the process of converting our bedroom to a bedroom/nursery I bought some blackout curtains from TJ Maxx. As I was sitting around the house recently I thought to myself why not get some more curtains from TJ Maxx to use to make a bedskirt. The weight of the curtains would be perfect to completely hide everything I now have stashed under the bed, and a bedskirt in the same fabric as the curtains would bring a nice continuity to the room.

$19.99 for a pack of two panels at TJ Maxx.

So here goes my first ever how to blog post….

I only needed the bedskirt to cover 3/4 of my full size bed, so I was able to make the bedskirt out of one package of two 40'' x 84'' panels . If you wanted to make a bedskirt to completely go around your bed you would have to buy a total of four panels.

I have our bed situated against the wall, like a day-bed flanked by two Ikea dressers. So I only needed to make 3 panels for the bedskirt. One for the length and two for the width of the bed.

She was originally going to velcro the bedskirt to the box spring.

I began by making the panel for the length of the bed out of one curtain panel. I cut a piece of fabric that was about 72'' x 26'', the length of the bed 72'' by 26'' (which is the height from the box spring to the floor + 6''). I used the hemmed side of the curtain for the bottom of the bed skirt, thus there was no need to sew a hem for the bottom of the bedskirt and an added bonus being that the bottom of your bed skirt will have a perfectly straight hem. All I had to do was sew the sides of the panel (you could even do this by hand if you did not have a sewing machine). Don't worry to much about your length measurement as there will be corner pieces that will allow for any imperfections in length (if anything I'd make your panels a little bit shorter than the length of the bed).

I then needed two panels for the width of my bed, I planned on using the second curtain panel for this. The second curtain panel was not long enough to cover the length of both ends of the bed, so I made my end panels only 3/4 of the length of my bed ends. Part of the sides of my bed are hidden behind the dressers. I cut a 26'' wide panel out of the entire length of the curtain and then cut it in half in order to get my side panels.

I originally planned to attach my bedskirt to the bed with velcro. So I finished off the cut side of my panels with a hem and velcro, but once I was done I realized this step is not necessary (unless you want to hot glue velcro to your box spring and attach the bed skirt with velcro). At the last minute my husband had the brilliant idea to attach the bedskirt to the box springs using safety pins. I used quilting safety pins because they have a little bend in the middle which makes them easier to use.

I WISH I was this organized.  I would be frantically scrambling in a junk drawer to find a safety pin.

I used velcro to attach a bed skirt to our baby's crib, but safety pins work great for attaching the bedskirt panels to the box spring if you don't want to deal with the hassle of hot glue. Here are some pictures of my son's crib.

She used velcro to attach the crib skirt to the board.

Out of the scraps I had left over from my curtain panels I cut two 10'' x 26'' pieces to to cover the corners of the bed. I used the part of the curtains that had the grommets, just to make it a little interesting. If you were making a bed skirt to go around your entire bed you would need to have four of these pieces.

Once I had all my pieces cut and had hemmed the side edges I was ready to attach the bedskirt to the box spring. I started by pinning the corner pieces first, and then attached my three side panels. I placed a safety pin every 6-12 inches.

I like the idea of safety pinning or velcroing the bed skirt to the box spring, because it is sure to remain in place. When I had a bed skirt I had bought from the store it always got bunched up and would look all messy every time I tried to make the bed.

Here's a picture of the completed project. I hope you enjoyed!!

Thanks Gina!  Gina has all kinds of ideas for redecorating her apartment, including making a super-cool headboard.  I hope we get to see more of her projects soon...and I don't have to cut off my fingers to get another blog post out of her!!!  I love you Gina!