Velcro Burlap Bed skirt

March 21, 2010 AT 10:49 pm 62 Comments

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I am continuing to work on my master bedroom makeover.

I found an entertainment armoire to hide our tv in for $40.oo! It needs a little work and a fresh coat of paint, but I think it will look great when I am finished. :)

A little progress has been made on my bedding. This part can be stressful. I am trying to come up with the colors that I want in my bedroom. I was leaning toward my favorite colors…tan, black, white, and red. But lately, I’ve been wanting to add a little bit of light blue instead of red to my palette.

I went to some fabric stores and found a fabric that I loved. It had some blues and browns in it, and I might make some pillows with it. Not sure.

But I did decide what material to use for my bed skirt.

Brown burlap.

Ya’ll know that I love burlap. And when I was looking at my inspiration fabric, I could picture it with a brown bed skirt. I remembered that Hobby Lobby had some brown burlap on sale for $1.99 a yard. How can you beat that?

I bought four yards of it and brought it home. I tucked it under my mattress to get an idea of what it would look like and I loved it!

So here is what I did to make it.

The burlap comes in a 45 inch width, so I unfolded the material and cut it in half. I will be able to make skirts for two sides of my bed with this.

Using one half of the material, I decided to make my hem on the outer un-cut edge by first ironing the edge over about a half inch.

Then I folded it over again about an inch and pressed it again

Next I sewed a straight stitch down the hem.

Now I have to explain this great idea I had for making a bed skirt.

I wanted to make a skirt that I could just velcro onto my box springs. I have made bed skirts before that are like the kind you buy in the store. The ones that have the material all the way across the box springs that the skirt is attached to.

It was always really hard for me to get the bed skirt to fit “just right”. One side was usually too long, and I would have to use safety pins to keep the skirt in place. Even bed skirts you purchase in stores can drive you nuts. They are always moving around when you put your fitted sheet on, or they will end up sliding over and drooping on one side. I can’t stand that.

So to keep my bed skirt in place, I decided to velcro it to my box springs. I didn’t come up with this idea on my own. My mom was a professional seamstress, and she had told me about this idea. She hadn’t tried it herself, but she said she had seen other professionals do it.

I have always wanted to try it, and my bedroom makeover was the perfect place.

So I bought some industrial strength velcro from Walmart for twenty dollars. I didn’t like paying that much, but it was a lot cheaper than the velcro I almost bought at JoAnn’s Fabrics. It would have been over 40 dollars there!

I got it because it was two inches wide, and I thought that it would make the bed skirt more durable. (You may be able to find it somewhere else for less.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that it had a “sticky” back to it. (I know…it says it right on the box! Duh.) The stickiness actually became a huge pain when I was sewing the material to it.

Now you might think I am crazy, but I hot glued the velcro to my box springs. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere. :)

The velcro strip looked something like this when I was done. (I have pushed my mattress back to take this picture.)

The edge of the velcro was 17 inches from the ground so I decided to make the skirt 18 inches long.

The next steps are not easy to describe in a post, but I will try.

The total length of my material from top to bottom was about 22 inches long (after I had already hemmed the bottom). I wanted the skirt to be a finished length of 20 inches…18 inches for the part of the skirt you would see, and 2 inches to sew onto the velcro strip
and tuck under the mattress.

I also created a one inch hem on each side of the skirt.

The next part made me almost lose my sanity!!!

I was going to show you an easy way to pin the material to the velcro strip, but there was no EASY to it! The material kept sticking to the strip when I didn’t want it to. (I’m not going to go into detail of how I literally wrestled that strip of sticky velcro…it’s just too painful to re-live.)

I finally decided to use the “stinky” to my advantage.

I just folded the material over every couple of inches and pressed it to the “sticky”.

It still wasn’t holding together very well, so I ran to my sewing machine and began sewing.

I sewed a straight stitch on the top and bottom of the two inch velcro strip and attached it to the box springs.

Though I wasn’t sure it was all going to come together…

it turned out exactly as I had hoped.

(I still need to iron it in a few spots.)

I ADORE the look of burlap.

 

I only have pictures of the left side of my bed because I haven’t done the other sides yet. :)

I used a little less than four yards for this side of the bed. I had to cut off about 6 inches of one end because there was a bad place in the burlap. Sometimes that happens.

The other half of this material will be used for the skirt at the end of the bed. I will need to get 4 more yards to do the right side of the bed and will have material left over for pillows if I need it. ;) I will have 8 total yards in the whole bed skirt which will cost me $16.00. So the whole skirt ended up costing me $36.00. I think that’s pretty good! (I already had the other supplies like thread and glue sticks.)

I am hoping to finish the skirt tomorrow, and start painting the armoire.

Update:  Here is a picture of my bedskirt in my completed bedroom makeover.

If you have any questions about my bed skirt, please feel free to ask. It’s usually best to email me at

beneathmyheart4(at)gmail(dot)com

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