Some DIY nursery action - crib sheet, teething guard, and a book hammock...

I usually spend my weekends making something for our house, these days. I have been wanting to make Henry a crib sheet for some time, mostly because the tutorials all seemed super easy. It took me a while to commit to the right fabric because Henry's glider has a white with navy ikat-ish print. But the navy isn't really navy, its like dark dark blue. So when I stumbled upon Sari by Dear Stella, I just knew that it would be perfect. Also, his nursery is mostly very soft colors, and I feel this dark fabric really adds some punch and personality to a room for a boy that is soon to be 1!

To make the sheet, I followed the tutorial at Dana Made It. It was SUPERRRRRR easy. If you are a true beginner, you could easily make one! There are probably millions of tutorials out there, and I assume most are exactly the same. I would suggest making a casing for the elastic, and then sliding it through at the end. Some tutorials show you how to sew the elastic onto the sheet, and that just seems dumb and hard to me. Also, I love everything on Dana's blog. A lot of crafters don't necessarily have... the best taste? But everything she makes is super cool and simple, and I feel her aesthetic lines up with mine about 90% of the time.

Here she is...

Pillow made from corner scraps and leftover pompoms...

Matches the glider beautifully!...

I also made a rail guard for the crib. About one second after Henry could pull up in his crib, his mouth went straight for the rail. I looked around online, and all the fabric guards were made for a crib with a larger top rail. We have a Jenny Lind crib (which I cannot recommend enough - so cute and cheap), and the top rail is really skinny. I found one I loved on etsy (before I could sew), but it was going to be like $100 and I just couldn't pull the trigger.

I am not going to present a tutorial, but I will tell you in general how I made it...

1. Roughly measured how big it needed to be

2. Cut 1 piece of fabric and two identical pieces of fleece to give it "padding"... So actually, the blue fabric was not long enough, so I pieced the two mint green panels in so that it would stretch the entire length of the rail. 

3. Sewed them all right sides together, flip right side out, top stitch a 3/4 inch border

4. Make fabric ties, and then sew them into place... No matter what your ties are like, you need to have some on the end that tie onto the posts horizontally. I made another one of these a few months ago, and I didn't do that, and Henry was able to move the guard all around. 

The bumper is from Carter's. It's just plain white, and about the only one I could find that I didn't hate under $100. I have considered making Henry a new one. They sell the pads to use at craft stores, but the pads are like $30+ and you would have to buy several yards of fabric, so I abandoned the idea. I also used to have a crib skirt, but I decided that now that his crib is lowered, that it just looked goofy and unnecessary. 

Here is the crib before he ever slept in it and needed all the ACCESSORIES. Obviously, that pillow was just for decoration...

Lastly, I have been wanting this book caddy from the Land of Nod for months. Obvi, I didn't want to spend the money, so it never happened. The thing I am probably most secure about as a mom is that I read Henry AT LEAST 15 books a day. He gets 5 books before every nap and bed time. I didn't really do this out of any sort of literary goal, I just needed a good sleep routine, and reading books seemed like the best option. (PS - Henry freaking loves books now... even more than the iPad!). 

Anyway, we had the books just stacked up on the side table, and because we have like 20 in rotation since we read so many a day, they would stack up and fall over, and it was super annoying. I racked my brain trying to think of how I could make the same book caddy in a DIY version with fabric. I originally had thought I could get a drying or luggage rack and make a fabric thing on top to hold the books. It proved to be harder than I would have thought to find a cheap frame. I also considered making something out of PVC but that would involve spray paint, and I HATE painting things. Then it dawned on me that I had this laundry hamper that could work. 

So I took this...

And turned it into this...

I somehow really messed up the dimensions of the fabric. It should have been wider so that the fabric fell down into a 90 degree angle when books were in it, but this is more of a shallow hammock... and it works. I literally gave myself ONE nap time to make this, and I pulled it off, and was not willing to "rework it" in any way. I just took the bag that I already had and sewed some random scraps of fabric on in lines. You can tell, the lines aren't even straight, but the better you get at sewing, the more you realize how unnoticeable a lot of stuff like that ends up being. I was not willing to use anything but scrap fabric for this project which means it literally cost me ZERO DOLLARS. My fabric is so precious to me that I will only cut into if it I am making a sellable item or a gift. 

Sewing is just about the most fun thing ever. In a couple hours, I transformed my baby's nursery into something that feels so much cooler and so much more in tune with what I like for our house. 

Love,

Lauren