Tuesday, February 17, 2009

New Clothes for Queenie

Another excuse for not blogging as much is that I was working on some pretty boring stuff that I didn't think was particularly blog-worthy, but because I'm feeling pretty pleased with the results, I'm going to share it with you, in case you had some home furnishing craft urges too.

...I made a bed skirt. Because it was outrageously expensive to buy one.

We got a new bed for Christmas, but it's just on metal rails. One day my dream is to own real bedroom furniture not made of pressed wood, but since that's expensive stuff, it'll be some time before that happens. But while I'm waiting, I figured the least I could do was give the bed a skirt to make it look a little nicer. After some research, I realized I'd need a skirt length of 17", which just doesn't seem to exist. I found some 18" skirts, but they were usually full of ruffles and eyelets... I just wanted something plain. Plus, I would have had to hem an 18" skirt, and I wasn't about to fork over $175 to do another 2 hours of work myself.

Being thrifty is kind of fun, especially when you've got lots of time to spare and like crafts. I went to TJ Maxx and bought a luxury King-sized sheet, got a DIY book from the library, and set about making this box-pleated skirt. The book was Simple Soft Furnishings by Katrin Cargill, and I did the skirt without the cording in the pattern (a major pattern errata: it told me to add 22" to one piece of fabric when it should have been 2". Stupid typo).

My box pleats turned out quite neatly if I say so myself! But not without significant whining and fussing, and bit of cursing...I had to do it over a few times, but that's because I'm a semi-perfectionist. The plus side is that I've now totally got the box pleat down, in case I ever need the technique again...maybe a table cloth? A chair cover?

Anyhow, I'm liking the skirt. I think it makes my bed more appealing. Gatsby and D agree too. Maybe I should have chosen a more exciting fabric...the book used a cute gingham fabric. I never really thought about making clothes for my bed before...my eyes have been opened!

Total cost: $9.99 plus tax, and a full day of fussing. If I ever make a second one, I'm sure it would take less time.

So, what are you going to make for your bedroom?

2 comments:

Ellen said...

Love it, the box pleats look fantastic. That is awesome that the total cost of the project was only $9.99!

Anonymous said...

It looks very nice. I can totally identify with a bit of the cursing on such a project ;) And also I admire you for working on such a big (long and wide!) piece of fabric. I think I'd loose my feeling of space working on something that huge. This means, I'll probably stick to pillow-covers ;))