Reuse & upcycle: duvet covers to sheets

When I started my decluttering mission in 2015 I realized that, other than books, what was mostly crowding my closets were old children clothes and other memorabilia from the earlier days of my kids' life.

While I'm glad to see them grow healthy and happy and I'm starting to enjoy this phase in their lives when they still want to cuddle but don't need to cling to me 24/7 (especially at night...), there are times when I really miss the days when they were tiny babies sleeping in their cribs. That is probably why I have kept a shelf full of their crib linens.

But I'm seriously decluttering and crib linens are not something we can use right now (or never again, as we don't have plans to expand the family). They have to go. But I can't seem to be able to just discard all those cute fabrics that hold so many memories. Last weekend I went on a purging spree and I managed to upcycle two duvet covers and one crib sheet.

This is not the first time I upcycle olde linens (check here and here), but this post is about the duvet covers, that I converted into regular sheets that my kids can now use in their current beds.

I started with this:

It is a crib-sized duvet cover from Ikea that my mother in law purchased when my oldest was a wee baby. Even though it's seven years old and was used for two babies, it is still in great condition. And besides, I love the fabric.

I forgot to take pictures of the process, but it basically goes like this:

• cut the bottom of the duvet cover (where the opening is)
• open the side seams (carefully, to avoid damaging the fabric)
• once this is done, you will have one long piece of fabric, roughly the size of a regular twin bed sheet (length is OK, width may be on the smaller size, depending on the width of the duvet cover you start with, so check before you cut the duvet cover, just in case)
• hem the bottom and the side seams
• create a larger hem on the top (no special reason why, I just think it looks better)

Because upcycled doesn't have to mean ugly, I added a bit of white trim: 

This is the end result, ready to be stored again but now completely useful:

And then I did the same to this one:

It's a great fabric, with construction motives, that my son used to love to have in his bed. And now it is also back again, turned into a regular sheet (minus the trim - it was getting late and my son would not have noticed it anyway, so I didn't bother).

If you have old duvet covers from when your kids were small, this is a quick and easy way to make them useful again, and requires only minimum sewing skills.

In addition to these two, I also made a pillowcase the easiest way possible (tutorial to come) and I transformed a brand new but plain queen sized duvet cover into a twin sized duvet cover (duly embellished) for my daugher's bed. And there is still one other duvet cover missing (my two kids shared a total of three between them), the one with the Miffy bunnies, which is missing in combat as of now but will definitely star in its own post in the future. So there is lots of upcycling coming this way, stay tuned!

Enjoy,