I love my aunt. She has pretty much the same taste that I do and she is about as close to a saint towards the people around her as humanly possible. She generously offered me a project to modify a pair of bed skirts to fit an adjustable bed. For anyone who has owned such a bed they are comfortable but a total pain in the butt. At least if you want to use standard bed accessories, and finding ones made to fit such a bed are like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I had owned one a few years ago and had devised a solution to the bed skirt dilemma, so I was supremely confident in my ability to help. The reason adjustable beds are so difficult is they have a metal bar that keeps the mattress from slipping off the frame when it is elevated. This leaves a typical bed skirt unable to hang down in the spot that the bar is located. My solution was to separate the skirt from the deck (the deck is the portion that goes between a typical mattress and box spring) where this bar was, hem both edges, and then attach Velcro so that it could be refastened around the bar. After getting the measurements I was a little concerned by the sizing. She told me the bar was 31” and sent me a picture.
The bottom of the bed skirt was 51” but I had a hard time believing the distance from the edge of the bar to the corner of the bed was 10” on either side. She also told me there was only the one bar on the end, which should have been another warning sign as mine had had one on the bottom and one on the side. Did I listen to these red flags? Of course not I just continued on and of course finished in record time!
Then the time came to put them on the beds. I attempted to lift the mattress twice realizing all too slowly that this mattress does not come off… Crap. My whole solution hinged on that particular design. That’s when the light bulb came on. Slowly. Like a really cold florescent bulb. This was not the same bed style I had, and this was not going to work. Fortunately, also like a florescent bulb once it was on it was bright and I began running through possible solutions in my head. Most of them required more Velcro, or elastic, or some other material that could somehow make the bed skirt stay without it’s deck. I have seen variations s where people have attached Velcro or fabric tape to the bed frame, or even made the skirt in the fashion of a fitted sheet. As I left her house overwhelming laziness struck. Going to the store just seemed like a lot especially with 2FTT falling asleep in the back. So focused on how I could make what I already had work and voila inspiration struck. The mattress lifted up on both the top and bottom in fact the only problem with the bed skirt (aside from being a little too wide) was about a square foot of area that was attached so that the deck couldn’t go in between. My answer: cut that part out! I cut along the side about 6.5 inches in from the seam, down to where I estimated would give me enough space from the bolts, about 30 inches. I then cut over to the other side another 6.5 inches from the seam, up another 14 inches along the seam and back to the other side to cut out a rectangle. When I measured the width of the bed it came to about 39 inches. Folding over the sides to this width and hemming all the edges left me with an open rectangle and a foot and half flap on the top that reached the other side.
Now you may ask why I didn’t just take out the whole top portion? The reason was I didn’t want to have to attach anything to the bed itself and thanks to our friend gravity the sides would not stay up without some form of tension. The weight of the bed could have provided some but I know how much I roll around in my sleep (ask my husband he’s almost fallen out of bed a few times from being pushed to the edge…), so I didn’t trust that to stay in place over time. I added my remaining pieces of Velcro to the top of the side and the flap so that once in place the flap could be reattached creating the necessary tautness to hold it in place.
The results fit perfectly! With an added bonus of still being useful as a normal bed skirt in the future if she should switch beds. Another win for the semi-prepared! In my typical fashion I also added a few decorative buttons because, well, why not?
Allison Elizabeth Davis 