Nursery set, straight from Satan!

Okay, maybe it just felt like it was sent from Satan once I started. This wasn't the very next project that I did, but it was, and probably still is, the biggest project I've undertaken. Let me set the scene: my sister Abby is pregnant with her very first baby and it's a girl! The previous year, she had made all the nursery bedding for our oldest sister (Shrimp) when she had her first baby (a girl also) so I thought, hey, I can do that too! I can only attribute this huge lack of foresight to the drinking. I don't know what else to say.

So Shrimp and I make the rounds to all the fabric stores and nothing is really striking our fancy. Or rather, I would offer up what I thought would be acceptable and Shrimp would slap it to the ground in disgust. That's how I remember things going. Finally, we find a store in Tampa that has a fabric we like, but of course, we don't stop there! We are giddy with the prospect of making the most girly yet chic bedding we can imagine and are just drunk on power. Or Harbor Mist. We end up getting 4, count them 4, coordinating fabrics along with yards of tulle and ribbon. This is the basic pattern we started with. Oh, and when I say we, I mean me. I didn't live in the same town as Shrimp so I hauled the booty back south and started the project that shaved 5 years off my life. I'll tell you right now that no matter how much I complain, it was totally worth it in the end. But I am definitely going to bitch it up now. Hey, it's my blog!

You're probably thinking the same thing we were when we saw this pattern. Only one layer of ruffles in the bed skirt? What wimps! I'll make layers upon layers! It'll look like a cake when I'm done! Since this would be the cornerstone to the bedding- the piece that will use up the most fabric and will require the most time, I started with the bed skirt. Okay, here are 2 things you need to know if you're going to do this:

1- This will take more fabric than you realize, especially if you're making a ruffle which requires twice the length of fabric to start with. Abby had warned me about this but you don't realize it until you're in the thick of it and you're wondering where the hell all this fabric came from and what is the quickest way to put yourself out of your misery?

2- Even though I made it 4 sided, it really only needed to be one long side and the two ends. Save yourself time and money by skipping the back side because unless you have a huge room where the crib is not going to be against anything but floating in the middle of the room, you will never EVER see the back. I don't know anyone who doesn't have the crib pushed against the wall on one side.

Although I LOVE the finished product, I wish I would have thought ahead so that when I finished a bow and it looked really cute, I realized that I would have to do approximately 522 more to go all around the skirt. I rounded up on that count. But how awesome is this thing:

Here are the different layers-

The very bottom was tulle for puffiness but you don't need to see that. For the first visible bottom layer, I pieced together the green striped fabric with the pink striped fabric so it alternated all the way around. This was Shrimp's idea but naturally, the monkey got stuck doing the work. See a pattern here? I'm a sucker.

Second layer, small green dots. That seemed kinda boring so over that I added-

shiny pink tulle with a ribbon trim and decorative stitching.

The top layer was the pink toile that was caught up every foot or so with alternating pink and green striped bows. Overall effect? I wanted to make a prom dress out of this thing and wear it like a princess. So adorable. And the upside was that once this was finished, the rest seemed pretty easy!

Seriously, just looking at the pictures makes me happy. I can't believe I made this! So after that came the diaper holder thingamabob:

It was made mainly from the green dotted fabric and I did the topper in a bunch of ruffles using all the different fabrics. There is no such thing as 'over the top' in our family. Down the front I did another small ruffle with a ribbon trim and a decorative leaf stitch:

Then came that hanging thing that holds all the lotions and crap. As you might guess, I don't have kids yet so I don't know what the actual name of this thing is but here it is:

Apparently using every single fabric on every item was like crack to me. I just couldn't get enough.

Next came the bumpers. These were more challenging than I expected but I don't remember why. I think I blacked out a lot while making this stuff. It was the only way I could get through it I guess. Naturally, the bumpers are reversible (surprise!) and here's one hint: if you're going to use lace, or really whatever, for the ties, make sure you buy enough all at once! I started with lace then ran out and could not find more of the same at the stores and ended up using different material for some of the other ties on the bumper. It was frustrating, but not enough to take off all the lace ties and replace them.

Here are the pink sides....

... and here are the green sides.

These ended up being a little too long for the crib so you may want to get exact measurements instead of just using the pattern. A few inches makes a big difference. Heh heh heh- that's what she said. I think these were difficult because I sewed the batting into the seams and turning them out and getting the seams nice was harder than I had thought it would be.

This is not the best picture, but the final item was a little baby quilt with the baby's initials monogrammed in the middle.

I didn't use the pattern for this because I wanted to make it as a duvet cover for a down crib comforter since they live up north and I wanted them to be able to take the cover off and wash it. So I bought the comforter from Ikea, took the measurements, and through some feat that I really don't understand today (I guess it's like how you can lift a car up to save someone if you have to but you don't really know how you did it), I measured out how many squares I would need to go evenly across and then down. Here are some close ups.

This is the back of the quilt- pink flannel with a 'made with love' charm inside a heart. I know it's kind of cheesy, but it really was made with love for my goddaughter. Love and lots of vodka.