Ombre ruffled bed skirt

So, I told you in yesterday's post that I've been working on the girls rooms for when we do the big room switcheroo when the baby comes. I was able to cross off another project from my to do list. 

Jasmin hasn't had a bed skirt on her bed. Partly due to laziness and not wanting to spend the money, but mostly because all of her toy tubs are under her bed and I wanted her have easy access. 

Since we will be putting Ava's toys in the closet instead of under the bed, I thought it was finally time to work on a bed skirt. I combed through Pinterest, and originally planned on doing a tutu tulle bed skirt. But after seeing this one, I knew that ombre ruffles were the way to go. 

The first thing I did was measure her bed from the top of the boxspring to the floor, which measured 15 inches. I ended up having to go back to the fabric store when we were about to put the ruffles on the bed skirt. I knew I wanted to cut the fabric into 6 inch strips. So, me with my preggo brain, figured 6+6+6=18, so it'd be long enough. But I didn't factor in the fact that after I double rolled one edge and ruffled the other, they only measured about 5 inches. So back to the fabric store I went. 

So, pretend we have 4 colors here. I bought 1.5 yards of each (I used broadcloth from Hobby Lobby for $2.99 a yard). Then I cut them into 6 inch strips, and sewed them together to make one long piece of each color. Then double rolled one edge under and sewed it.

Now, I know when some people make ruffles, they do one long stitch, and then grab the ends and scrunch the fabric and then sew on top of that to secure it. I would highly suggest a ruffle foot. It makes making ruffles SO easy, they're all the same size, and they're sewed and secure in one step. You can adjust the amount of ruffle by the tension on your machine.

I attached my ruffles to an old bed skirt that my mom had. It's one of those pleated ones. I didn't want to have to worry about the pleats or how that would make my ruffles lay, so I sewed the corners together.














Now, your measurements might be different, depending on how long your drop is. For my 15 inch drop, I knew I wanted my ruffles to hit about 14.5 inches. My bed skirt already had a 15 inch drop, and since I didn't want the purple to show, I hemmed up the bottom a couple of inches. Then I laid the ruffles on the bed skirt to figure out my spacing. I ended up putting marks at 3, 6 and 9.5 inches, and that is where my three bottom layers would line up.

I sewed from bottom to top so I didn't have to worry about the layer on top getting in the way. I put marks every 6 inches or so, lined up the ruffles and sewed. I just lined up my ruffles on the marks, and sewed right on top of the ruffle. Since it's covered by a couple inches of the ruffle on top, I didn't worry about hiding the stitches. I also only sewed the ruffles on two of the three sides of the bed skirt. I ended up with enough ruffles to go all the way around, but I wanted to have some fabric left over to redo her lamp shade. I did wrap it around the third side by ten or so inches just in case it was visible. Make sense? 

On the top layer, my mom sewed the ruffle as shown. I didn't want any of the stitches to show since it was the top layer. So she laid it on the bed skirt with the wrong side of the white to the right side of the bed skirt. Then sewed just to the side of the ruffle stitch. That way, when it's flipped down, you don't see any of the stitches, it's just a nice pretty ruffle.

See? Nice ruffle with no stitches showing. If I had planned it better, I would have sewed a strip of white fabric to the edge of the purple before doing the ruffle, since you can see a sliver of purple on the finished bed. But live and learn.

Here is the finished bed skirt.













And our finished product! My mom and I made the quilt last month, based on a free pattern I found online. I'll do a tutorial on it soon. 

Not bad for $17 worth of fabric and a few hours of time! 

Let's party...