Nursery Updates

I mentioned that I was crafting away last week. Aside from one homemade gift, all the projects were bound for Miss M's nursery. What can I say? I had a lot of pent up creativity after spending a week recuperating away from my crafting space.

Before we get into the specifics of my new creations, let's take a look at the evolution of Madeleine's nursery. It was nearly a year ago when I revealed her completed nursery at our old house (see the original post for the source list and more photos).

This nursery served us well during those early months in the trenches of new parenthood, but we moved house when Madeleine was a mere 15 weeks old. The curtains and attached shelves stayed behind for the new owner. The Kiwi alphabet didn't survive its removal from the wall.

Otherwise, the nursery pretty much came with us to our new house. In the new nursery, we had the walls painted Benjamin Moore Seaside Resort, hung some picture ledges for books, and moved in our old nursery. Over the past six months, we also changed out the old blinds for blackout shades (in snow) and changed out the partially painted gold knobs for clears ones on the closet doors. This is more or less how the nursery looked from getting set up until this weekend (you know, on a good day).

There are a few things that sparked my recent surge of projects and updates to the nursery. One, I was annoyed every.single.time I looked at the crib skirt. I'd never loved it, and I loved it even less as I tried to make the longer skirt work after the mattress was lowered to the lowest setting. Two, I knew that crib damage was inevitable if I didn't make some rail protectors before Madeleine sprouted some teeth because she has already shown beaver-like tendencies when left alone in her crib. Finally, I felt the wall with the windows was sparse without curtains, valences, or something.

Armed with some ideas and the estimation that I'd need about four yards of my primary fabric, I spent part of Mother's Day fabric shopping (alone - such a treat!). After ruling out many fabrics for being too kiddo, too trendy, too flashy, or too plain, I found my Goldilocks fabric: this cute polkadot print (Mini Mikes Mini Dot by Michael Miller).

When I came home, I discovered that it's the same fabric manufacturer and same colors as the fabric that inspired the nursery color palette more than a year ago (Michael Miller Lolli Dots).

One week of feverish sewing later, I'm thrilled to show you Miss M's corner of the world now.

I made a new crib skirt to fit the current (and final) mattress position. I had very low hopes for my ability to get it to accurately fit both the length of the crib and height from the floor, but I seem to have succeeded. And I am way too excited about that pretty little pleat.

I removed the rug because I thought it'd be too much with the pattern of the new skirt, but I'm having second thoughts because the floor seems so bare after I'm used to seeing it with the rug. I'm going to give it some time and then reconsider.

Although there are lots of really simple ideas for how to make crib rail protectors, I ended up designing my own because I didn't want to lose the pretty curved detail of the crib by putting something frumpy and rectangle on it. Come back on Friday, and I'll show you how I did it and go into more detail about these little beauties.

I was originally planning to make some simple valences for the windows, but the shades are mounted too far toward the front of the window to attach any sort of curtain rod inside the window. So, my solution for dressing up the windows consists of a $2 craft store letter painted in (spoiler alert) the red that will soon be appearing on our front door and leaving the shades down a bit when they're not in use.

Because I was already working on things for Madeleine's room, I went ahead and made a modified version of the Noodlehead divided basket (yep, I'm obsessed) to store overnight diapers and other bits and bobs. The interior fabric, binding, and red finishing stitching on the basket may be my favorite details in the room.

To coordinate with the other fabric items in the room, I made a handy, dandy trash bag holder for old grocery bags (from this tutorial). This thing is huge. While I wish that I would have followed my gut and made it smaller than the tutorial suggested, I'm pretty sure that we won't need to refill it until Madeleine's going to school. 

To top it off, Madeleine also got a new shelf, a new set of hooks behind the door, and some cable management for her webcam cord. 

Yep, that's yours truly with my grandma. 

My favorite items, by function, are the chair and the webcam. That said, the details and the occupant are the parts of the room that really make me smile.

I hesitate to say that Madeleine's room is "done" because I know it'll continue to evolve, especially little things like the trinkets on her shelf. That said, I have high hopes that the fabric creations I made last week will serve her well through the rest of infancy and toddlerhood.

And now you can go rest your eyes after making it through 498,573 photos. Happy Monday, world.