Wednesday, August 29, 2012

DIY - Crib Bumpers

The current controversial issue with doctors and moms... crib bumpers. After making the decision that I wanted crib bumpers, I searched the good old www and found that I could make my own, pretty easily. The fabric store sells foam bumper batting precut, and this brand even comes with some simple directions...

NU-Foam Bumper Pad Batting
Instead of making custom ties and fiddling with thin strips of fabric, I opted to use some grosgrain ribbon instead (you could go with silk ribbon, a pattern, the options are endless!). I'm not a good one on showing all the steps, and thankfully this is pretty straight forward afterall. It's essentially 6 rectangles, following the directions provided with the foam, and pinning ribbon into place.

Here's what they turned out to look like. I chose a muted chevron pattern for the "outside" and a solid matching pink for the "inside" - that way they could always be reversible!


The tricky part was making sure that for the "long" sides of the crib (which is two bumpers) I had the chrevon stripes aligning, so the two pieces would be consistent visually. I have yet to bring these to Portland, get the crib there, and put it all together... keep your fingers crossed!

The other hard part was sewing the batting into the bumper. I quizzed the ladies at the fabric store and those who had made them before, had sewed in the batting (vs. leave an open pleat or zipper to remove the batting in the future) and said that it was machine washable and had no issues with putting it through the wash. In order to sew these in... the entire bottom turned into a hidden (or ladder) stitch... time consuming, but good practice.

Pre Ladder Stitch

Post Ladder Stitch


3 comments:

Bungalow13 said...

impressive! So cute! I can't wait to see the room all put together

HMC said...

Me too! A little nerve racking to do this blind!

kitchenexpert said...

When your baby changes his/her bed from crib to a toddler bed/child bed, he goes through a transition. In a crib, he/she gets protected from rolling out by the crib bars. For a child bed, this is not possible as there is no bar. But, he might be unable to remove the habit of rolling out at a sudden. Therefore, it can be risky for him as there are chances of falling out of the bed. So, he requires extra security for certain time. To ensure his or her security, you can purchase a set of foam bumpers or bed rails. If you ask for a quality bed bumpers for baby and adults, then we suggest you go for the Hiccapop Toddler Bed Bumper Foam and Bed Rails.