Bedskirt Tutorial

Just before Christmas the fabric I had ordered arrived and right away I went to work making a bedskirt for my daughter's room.  I have never made a bedskirt, but I figured how hard could it be?  As it turns out, it wasn't hard at all.

My daughter's bed is a daybed so I would need one long side and two short sides to my bedskirt.  For the long side the finished length would be 84".  First I decided what part of the pattern I wanted to show the most.  I picked the large damask to be the focal point of the skirt.  The finished length of the skirt would be 18".

I cut two widths of the fabric and then matched up the pattern and sewed them together to form one long 108" piece of fabric.   For the two shorter sides I used a single width of fabric for each side.  I hemmed the bottom of the fabric a quarter of an inch.

I wanted her bedskirt to have a ruffled effect.  I didn't want it super full looking, but just flowing.  I have a ruffler attachment for my sewing machine.  After trying it out on several pieces of scrap fabric, I felt fairly comfortable starting to ruffle the actual bedskirt.  Well I had more than my share of problems with that ruffler.  I couldn't get it to actually catch the fabric without me helping it along.  So it took much longer than I would have liked to ruffle it.  I read the instructions countless times...but they were not really helpful.

After I finished ruffling all of the fabric, I realized I better cut the sheet for the bedskirt to make sure my ruffled fabric actually fits.  I used a full size white sheet I had in the closet and actually laid it on the boxspring and cut it on site.  It was much easier to do it this way rather than take the measurements and then hope to cut straight lines.

Next I attached the ruffled fabric to the sheet, wrong side of the fabric to the top of the sheet.  I got lucky because the ruffled fabric ended up being exactly the length of the sheet.  Since the ruffler really wasn't working well I sort of winged the length of the ruffles...so I got really lucky.

I ended by sewing ribbon on the two back corners so that I could tie it to the bed posts to keep it from moving.

I laid it on the bed...perfect fit.  I tied it to the back rail on both sides.

The actual sewing time was less than an hour.  The fighting with the ruffler...twice that long.  In the end I love how it turned out.  Let me know what you think.  If anyone out there has tips on using a ruffler, I'd love if you would share those tips with me.  Check back tomorrow as I continue with the redesign of my daughter's room.

-Judy