New Doll Beds

The big Christmas present for my daughters were American Girl dolls. We've done the $20 Target dolls, and I finally decided it was time to upgrade to nicer dolls. Initially, I had grand ambitions of sewing the dolls clothing and matching pjs for my daughters and the dolls, as well as making beds, quilts and new duvet covers or quilts for my girls. As Christmas loomed closer, the list kept getting cut shorter. I learned I really dislike sewing doll clothes so I purchased a few sets of clothes on a great after-Thanksgiving sale. I also knew I didn't have time to sew new bedding for my daughters, so that was checked off the list. Next, the matching PJs got booted from the list. I could either enjoy Christmas or make a pair of pajamas for my daughters that neither girl actually needed.

Finally, I settled on only creating a beds and bedding for the dolls. It was a doable goal in the time I had. I loved this project as well as the outcome!

I started out with two plain wood Ikea doll beds. These beds are a fantastic deal. They are sturdy, plain wood that is easy to finish as desired, and they are cheap! I love Ikea! I spray painted the beds white which was fairly painful. Because it's unfortunately winter here, I couldn't really do this outside, which meant I was painting in our garage. On top of that I didn't want the girls to see so I could just do a few coats each night. A job that couldn't have been done in an afternoon if I were doing it outside dragged into more than a week for the painting.

I couldn't find any great tutorials for the bedding so I had to figure it all out on my own. The little pillow cases are my very favorite. I simply used the standard burrito method for the pillow case only in miniature. All of my fabrics came from the Michael Miller Glitz line. It's so adorably girly. I used the blush colorway for one bed set and the confection colorway for the other. There is only a slight difference between the two.

I also made a fun ruffled throw pillow for each bed. These little details are what made this whole project so much fun for me. Each quilt is reversible with the chevron print on one side and the large dot print on the other.

Each bed has a tulle bedskirt which was a bit of a nightmare, but I got better after three of these. (I also made a third bedding set in the mist colorway for my niece).

Each bed has a foam mattress. I used 1" foam from JoAnn. I originally planned to make fitted sheets, but opted to make a full cover for the mattress. This part was a bit tricky and took a little trial and error with the boxed corners, but I'm so glad I fully enclosed the mattress--no little brothers can pick apart the foam and make green foam confetti.

 I used my Silhouette to cut out the gold vinyl decals with the dolls' names as well as the accent shapes.

Both dolls sleep pretty comfortably now days!