Bedskirt for a Box Springless Bed

We’re running a little low on space in our tiny apartment (hopefully we’ll finally find a house soon!) so no space can go to waste when it comes to storage. That means that under the bed is prime real estate, space which we’ve already filled to the brim with clothes, a shelf we don’t have room for but want to keep, and various paintings and drawings. All these things fit pretty neatly under the bed, but it’s still not the kind of storage situation that you want to look at everyday. Problem is, our bed doesn’t have a box spring because: A) it is very Swedish and doesn’t require one and B) we are very cheap and didn’t buy one, so putting up a bedskirt that looks halfway decent is a bit of challenge.

We used to have  a pretty standard bedskirt (also from Ikea) on our bed that you can see here, but it was much too long (see how it’s laying on the floor? Yuck) and pretty quickly got dusty, dirty, and gross past the point of no return. So, I trashed that one (trust me, it was time to put it to rest), and decided to make one that was actually tailored to our bed.

Mission one was finding some plain gray fabric, which, believe it or not, wasn’t easy. Joann, among their hundreds of selections, didn’t have a thing. I ended up driving out of my way to go to Hancock Fabrics which had a great color and it was on sale, too! I also picked up several yards of velcro (not the name brand kind, which is crazy expensive) to use to attach my bedskirt to the bed. Sound weird? Let me explain.

There’s a small (1 inch or so) space between the edge of the wood on the bed frame and the metal parts that hold the slats. Perfect for velcroing a bedskirt into place. This velcroed bedskirt won’ t require going over the slats, can be tailored to fit perfectly to the legs and space between the floor and the bed, and will show off the wood edge of the bed. A perfect solution!

I started by getting all my measurements in order, cutting the fabric, and doing one hell of a lot of pinning. Easy work, yes. Fun work, no. This took quite a bit of time and I was super glad when it was all done. You’ll notice that the velcro gets pinned to the pretty side of the fabric.

Next, I took the mattress off of the bed and pulled back the slats. Around the entire edge of the bed, I hot glued the “hook” side of the velcro strips.  I think eventually staples or another kind of adhesive might be in order for long-term durability, but for now, hot glue is fine. There was one hang up in that I didn’t realize the end of the bed had a bracket on it, but I simply loosened it and slid the bedskirt under.

Then, to the sewing machine! I sewed three individual pieces for the bed, one for each side and a short guy for the bottom. Really easy, as it was all straight lines.

I came back into the bedroom to find these shenanigans happening. Uncool, dudes!

After removing the cats from the top of the mattress, I got to work pairing up the velcro so the bed skirt could hang. Super easy to put on and to take off when it needs to be washed. I put the mattress back, and viola! It looks so much better than it did before.

The cat even came back to try out the bed, horizontally this time.