Eat your heart out Martha Stewart

My crib rail protectors are finally finished. They may not be the most polished looking bit of decor. I'm definitely no Martha Stewart. However, I think they'll get the job done. The best part about the project was that it used materials I already had and took me maybe 5 minutes. We're going to make them together. Are you ready? Let's go. Begin with a receiving blanket. I used four total for the entire crib. These receiving blankets are soft flannel and match Sam's bedding. You could probably use any soft receiving blanket. I like the flannel because the fabric stays in place. I think cotton would slip around on the rails too much.

Take your receiving blanket and lay it out flat with the wrong side facing up. If you really want to be prissy, you can iron it and get rid of the wrinkles, but who cares. Its going on a crib and its going to be chewed and slobbered on. (Is it "its" or "it's?")

Now take a long side and fold it in towards the center. Take the opposite end and fold it in towards the center as well.

Now at this point, you could certainly sew the folded sides in place, but I don't have time to mess with my sewing machine right now. That would involve bringing it up from the basement since the builder of our fine home didn't see fit to add more than one outlet in the living space of our basement. So much for my basement sewing room and home office. That's a whole other project.

Now take the whole thing and fold it in half on itself. It will look something like this:


Now we are going to add velcro. The adhesive kind. Yes, I said adhesive. I don't have time to mess with sewing remember? Take a deep breath. It may be white trash, but it works. These are desperate times.


At this point my camera batteries died. The pictures will return shortly.
I took about 2 inches of velcro and cut it into 8 pieces, about a quarter inch each. I used four pieces per side crib rail. I put the velcro along the bottom edge of the folded blanket for the first cover and then pinned it more snuggly at the base of the rail. Don't just randomly place your velcro. Hang the cover over the crib rail first so that you can get the best fit. Our side rails are thinner toward the front and thicker toward the back. With the other side, I placed the velcro so that it would fit snuggly just below the rail. I don't like the loose ends, but either way works just as well. For the front rail of the crib, I had to use two receiving blankets. Because we have a sleigh bed style crib, I was even more ghetto and pinned the blankets in place because I had to fold them differently and couldn't finagle the velcro the way I wanted it. Here is how it looks.



Again it isn't professional, but they have held up through two naps and one night without shifting.