First Tulle Bedskirt for an IKEA Doll’s Bed

Is it bad that I’m getting addicted to making tulle bedskirts? It’s like I’m a glutton for punishment because tulle is so frustrating to work with, but I just can’t help it because they are so pretty!

tulle bedskirt for ikea duktig doll's bed

I posted the tutorial for how I made the tulle bedskirt for Leah’s bed a little while back, and now I’ve made a miniature tulle bedskirt for her IKEA Duktig doll’s bed. Except, for my first tulle bedskirt for an IKEA doll’s bed, I wasn’t 100% happy. I’m also working on a second tulle bedskirt for the Duktig doll’s bed, which I’ll be posting about soon.

For this tutu bedskirt, I used the leftover tulle scraps from the bedskirt I made for Leah’s twin bed, which is shown in the photo above. I had about 1.5m of tulle left, which worked out reasonably well. It just wasn’t very poofy and it was really see through, which was why I wasn’t perfectly happy with it.

I had a 1.5m piece of tulle and I needed to cut it into strips (cutting tulle straight is never an easy task!) My method for cutting tulle is to fold it in half, pin it with safety pins to keep it in place:

Fold and pin across the entire length:

And then pull the pinned edge snugly against the scissors and cut at the fold:

Since these strips were still too wide, I had to fold all the layers on half again, safety pin the edges and cut at the fold a second time:

So now I had 4 strips that were about 10″ wide. I folded them in half to about 5″ wide, but I didn’t bother pinning so I’d be able to adjust the edges while I was sewing them:

I ran them through the sewing machine on the side with the fold with a wide basting stitch so they could be gathered (don’t back stitch or you won’t be able to gather it):

So now there were 4 strips of tulle about 5″ wide each, all basted across one edge:

For each of the strips I pulled one of the threads to gather it. If you pull both threads at the same time it won’t gather, and if you pull one thread, and then switch and pull the other thread it will tighten the stitches too tight to gather. Once you pull the thread it will be obviously longer, so just make sure you always pull the same, longer thread (you can do this at both ends of the tulle to make it easier):

Now there were 4 gathered strips of tulle:

The IKEA Duktig doll’s bed has a bottom that looks like this:

I cut the white fabric 2″ wider than the bed base on all sides. The cotton used for men’s dress shirts was on super sale at my fabric store, so that’s what I used. I needed the 2″ on all sides because my strips of tulle were only about 4.5″ long, and the bed is higher than that, so the rest of the length came from the white fabric:

Since it was so much extra white fabric, I trimmed the corners so they wouldn’t dip down and be visible below the bed frame:

Then I pinned the tulle onto the white fabric:

Stretching and gathering as I went to adjust the length of each piece, until I had pinned the entire way around:

Since I wasn’t sure if this was going to work, I still hadn’t cut the long threads from gathering, so I pulled them out of the way so they wouldn’t get stitched into all the seams:

Then ran it through the sewing machine with a regular straight stitch (back stitching beginning and end this time):

So when I was finished, I cut the threads, and it looked like this:

It actually fit really well, and if it was more poofy and less see through, I’d be really happy with it. Maybe I’ll add a piece of pink fabric behind the tulle someday? We’ll see…

First Tulle Bedskirt for an IKEA Doll's Bed

I added the doll’s pillow I posted the tutorial for last week and a piece of leftover fabric from the cloth baby doll diapers I also posted the tutorial for last week, to dress it up a bit, and it looked like this:

It’s really cute!

tulle bedskirt for ikea duktig doll's bed

But you can see below that it’s a little see through, so you don’t get a super poofy look:

First Tulle Bedskirt for an IKEA Doll's Bed

I went out and bought more tulle, but they were out of pink, so the next tutorial for an IKEA Duktig doll’s bed tutu bedskirt will be with, wait for it… turquoisey blue tulle!

IKEA Duktig Doll's Bed tulle bedskirt