More Not Sewing: Crib Skirt Edition

I tried to finish the board and batten today so that I could tell you all about it--I really did. But I couldn't find the caulk. Dave and I both keep hoping the other person will finish the board and batten every time we leave the house. Anyway, given this tragic lack of caulk, I made a crib skirt instead.

We have the Sundvik crib from Ikea:

As you can see, it has solid panels on the ends that come pretty close to the ground, leaving only one non-wall facing side that needs any kind of adornment. And, really, I didn't mind it without one; I kind of like a Spartan crib. But I had the extra fabric from the curtains, so I figured I might as well go ahead and make one.

So I did. Mostly, it was remarkably similar to making no-sew curtains: measure, cut, measure, iron (heat and bond)....until you have a rectangle the right size. For more detailed instructions see one of the 8 million tutorials online or my post about making the matching curtains a little while back.

After all the ironing and not sewing, it looked like that.

Now I had to figure out a way to attach it to the crib. I had made a trip to Hobby Lobby to search for the proper equipment awhile back. I came home with some velcro adhesive tape from Sewology. They had about a million different sizes of this, and they had either self-sticking or sew-on varieties. Unfortunately, all of the adhesive kinds said they weren't good for things like....fabric.

Luckily, I happen to own a $3 tool that will solve all your adhesion related troubles:

 

I was reasonably confident that between the sticky tape on the back of the velcro and a precautionary couple of dots of glue, I'd be covered. It's not like the crib skirt has to move around a lot or anything.

So I attached  strips of the softer part of the velcro to my unsewed rectangle, spacing them every 10 inches (randomly, having guessed wildly at the perfect spacing) along the edge.

 Then I took it upstairs and fed it through the crib and arranged it just above the ground.

After all that careful measuring getting one side of the velcro on, I realized that it didn't really make much difference; the easiest thing was just to match the other side up to the pieces on the fabric and then stick it down on the crib.

See those holes? There's a line of those every so often all along the  crib, so I used them as a guide to line up the fabric, along with frequent checks to see if it looked fairly even along the ground.

And all finished:

You guys are so sneaky; you got yourselves ANOTHER board and batten preview.

I still have enough fabric left to make a pillow cover or something! I really shouldn't be proud of that, since it just means I bought too much fabric.

Oh, I should say that, to be honest, I was not super impressed with the velcro-like tape. I'm a little nervous about the consequences should I want to take the crib skirt down. It only needs to last a few months until we lower the mattress, though, so I may just go with lint rolling and spot cleaning where necessary rather than risk it all falling apart either in the wash or on its way there. Still--I spent something like $2.50 on the velcro tape (it was on sale) and used fabric I already had, so I think the trade-off in durability vs. a real crib skirt was worth it. I don't think I'll have any trouble with it staying put as long as I don't try to mess with it overmuch. I will report back if I discover otherwise!