It seems like I'm always changing things around. Before I show you the 'new' rooms, I thought I better show how things used to look.
About three years ago, my mother in law moved in with us and we bunked up our then 2 year old girl with our 10 year old boy. We didn't bunk the girls up because our 8 year old daughter loves to draw and had art supplies all over her room. I was afraid the 2 year old would color everything if left in that room, so we put her where she couldn't do much damage and that was with her older brother. They got along great, sometimes too great as they would play and not sleep, but for the most part it worked out.
As time passed and the kids matured (a little), we decided to bunk up the girls. Our youngest daughter loved the idea since she adores her big sister, but our older daughter wasn't liking having to share a room. So I decided to let her design the new shared room. She wanted a horse theme. We found these sheets at Garnet Hill. Not the cheapest set of sheets and I needed two since the younger daughter wanted to have a bed just like her sister's. Rather than also buying the duvet cover or comforter, I decided to make my own duvet cover out of the top sheet. The girls don't use their top sheets and it just ends up smooshed down at the bottom of the bed anyway. I used a plain colored top sheet as the underside of the duvet cover. I had a light pink one for our older daughter, but our younger daughter wanted purple so I had to go out and buy one. The cost of these two sheet sets was around $100, plus $10 for an additional sheet set (at Walmart it was cheaper to buy a purple sheet set than to buy just a flat sheet). Figuring I used half the sheet set to make the duvet, the cost worked out to about $26 per duvet cover. Not too bad. And it matches the sheets and pillowcases so I love it even more.
It was pretty simple to make. The only snag was that the horse flat sheet was longer and wider than the pink flat sheet. The difference in length didn't really matter as I just sewed the end closed with the bottom seam having the extra fabric. The wider width problem was solved by sewing the sides together to create a tube before sewing the bottom. This caused some of the top horse sheet to fold over onto the underside of the duvet. Not a big deal since you can't tell when the bed is made. As for the opening, I just left about a foot in the center of the top seam open to stuff the duvet in. The sheets are folded inward to create a wide seam and that keeps you from seeing the duvet inside.
And my daughter loves it.
After a few weeks of use, the duvet inside kept shifting. It just wasn't staying in place. So I figured out a way to fix that.
For the top bunk, I had a duvet inside the cover. For the bottom bunk, I had an old comforter inside the duvet cover. This left me with two different ways to attach the duvet to the cover to prevent it from shifting around.
The duvet has these little loops in each corner. I just sewed some white ribbon into the corners of the duvet cover (I did this by hand) and tied the ribbon into a bow, being sure to slip it through the loop of the duvet. That is show in the top two pictures below. The bottom two pictures show you could tie the ribbon around the corners of the duvet or comforter, if the duvet doesn't have the loops. This quick fix has been keeping the duvets in place for weeks.
So there you have it, how to make duvet covers and how to keep the duvets inside from shifting.
I'd love to show you more of my girls' horse themed bedroom. And just so you don't think a horse themed bedroom just has horse sheets, I've also done a few horse themed DIY projects in there. But I've changed things around already. My mother in law moved out last month and rather than put the baby in that room, we decided to put our youngest daughter in there -- for now anyway. I'll explain it all in another post later this week.
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