Make a bedskirt from a flat sheet

TGISaturday! Could the weekend last forever? That would be awesome.  So I'm still catching up with my end-of-2014 projects before I start telling you guys about the new stuff I've been doing.  This might be the last one that I did last year, actually!  Well, I also have a monster paint-trimming post to write, but let's worry about that later...

The bed in our guest bedroom was skirt-less for a couple years.  Don't worry, it wasn't completely naked - I had an old fitted sheet on the boxspring.  Sorry, no "before" picture again :(  I'm still new at this, ok!  Just imagine the fitted sheet on the boxspring, and your basic metal mattress frame.

I was inspired by this great tutorial from Designer Trapped in a Lawyer's Body, since I had an old flat sheet in the linen closet that would match the colors I already had.  And if I had the patience to wait the 2 days for the upholstery pins to come in from Amazon, I would have followed it to a tee!  But I had to adapt so I could pull this off with my sewing machine. (Ha! So ironic: a no-sew project modified into a sewing project. Spurred on by impatience.)

First, I started by ironing the sheet on high heat and steam until it was perfectly smooth.  Then, I put it over the boxspring and puckered up excess width in the middle,

 so that the left and right edges fell to the right length to the floor:

That pucker in the middle becomes the pleat.  Iron it straight down the middle, and sew it in place.

Next, the corners.  After lots of fiddling and pinning in the wrong places, the following method worked for me.  First, pull out the corners nice and straight:

Then, pinch the outermost corner and lift it to the SIDE of the bed, and smooth everything out.  (The side that is facing you in the photo is the left side of the bed.)

Basically, the diagonal line you see cast in that photo above is where you are going to sew a seam. Pin it together.

To preview what the corner will look like at the end, bring that panel down to the floor:

This is what it will look like after you sew the seam:

 And ta-da! The finished product, with minimal sewing!  You could also choose to forgo the pleat in the middle, but then you'd have to trim an edge of the sheet, and that would result in more sewing.  And who wants that.

Ok so for our closing dose of cute, I decided that we should get a shot of the dogs in a bed, since we're talking about beds here.  And as it turns out, I do have a "before" picture, albeit not ideal, of the cover we were using for the dog crate I featured on my last post!  Another very important thing you should note is how Elba seems to think Casper makes an excellent pillow.