Utility Sink Skirt

I know it might sound crazy to everyone. But I'm not excited about another week of sunshine. Ok, okay, sunshine is fine, but I'm so sick of the muggy-ness and sweaty-ness! I want to wear my cozy sweaters dang it! I want to feel what it's like to be cold again! And not when my husband is blasting the AC in the car. I want to make soup and hot chocolate. I want to put the BBQ in hibernation!!! Summer is fine and all....really, I like every season for different reason. Its just not ok, to pretend to be something you're not. I guess in all fairness, we haven't technically had the first day of Fall yet. Anyway, to distract myself from the Fall masquerading as the Summer, I am keeping busy with all the projects I can think of. You'd think that I would run out of ideas, but they just keep coming. I'm surprised I haven't had DIY dreams yet. I promised I would give the utility sink skirt tutorial that I made for my Laundry Room redo. So I decided I better do it, before weeks go by and I forget completely. So here it is.

You will need:

A lot of fabric! I bought 3 yards of the 54 inch wide bolts of fabric. The ones that are on the huge bolt. You can use the regular width fabric, but there may just be more piecing together.

Heavy Duty Velcro about 3 packages of the 1/2 inch to 1 inch wide self adhesive kind.

White thread (or matching your fabric)

Sewing machine

I don't know that all utility sinks are the same size (I imagine they are) so I would measure yours just to be sure. The sides of mine were both 24 inches and the front was 20 inches. I wanted my skirt to touch the floor so I made the length to be 34 inches. Note: These are the measurements for the finished product!

The gorgeous fabric I picked up on sale!

1. Start by sewing together your fabric to make a total piece of 148X35inches. Its going to be really long, but you want that much to make the ruffle. Make sure if you have pictures on your fabric as well, that they are all facing the right direction. The left and right sides should be 35 inches and the top and bottom should be 148 inches.

2. Make a hem on the bottom. Doing a zig zag stitch as well is a good idea if you ever plan on washing the skirt. This helps keep it from unraveling in the wash. You can all thank my mom for this step. She told me I needed to do it!

3. Rouche all the way through the top of the fabric. If your fabric is as heavy as mine, you won't be able to do the pulling method, because the thread will keep breaking, so use my cheater's method and just bunch the fabric as you shoot it through the sewing machine. You want to end up with the top being 68 inches wide. So use a measuring tape. And remember you are taking it from 148 to 68, so do a LOT of rouching. You can always go back over and bunch it up more if needed.

Here you can see it all laid out. Baby photo bomb.

4. Measure the top again, just to make sure its 68 inches. It will look really wide.

5. Then you make the band that will hold it all in place and cover the rouched top. Cut a 5.5X68inch piece of fabric and make a hem on both of the long sides.
6. Again making sure that the band is right side up (when its sewed) pin and sew the band over the top of the rouched fabric. First you sew behind the skirt, like shown below, then you flip down the top and sew down over the front of the skirt. The band will end up being about 2.5 inches wide.



Here is the underside of the skirt.

7. At this point, you should only see 2 seams on the band. One from when you hemmed the band and the other from sewing down the band onto the rouching. You can try and sew directly over the hem line so that you only see one stitch. Iron the top of the skirt so that the band lays flat.

8. Along both sides of the skirt make a hem and then use the zig zag stitch. If you ever wash it, which you will probably want to at some point, you don't want everything unravelling. For the sides of the band (pictured in the top right), I just tucked the ends in and sewed closed.
9. Then all you have to do is sew the velcro on to the band and stick to the sink! The velcro I used was sticky and I thought that I could just stick it to the skirt, which I did. But then the first time I tried pulling off the skirt from the sink, the velcro stayed stuck together and came off of the skirt. So sewing it onto the band is necessary. You will need quite a few packs of velcro as well. I used 3 packages of their heavy duty kind.

And there you have it! If any of you want to try making your own utility sink skirt and you have questions about this tutorial, just let me know! I would love to help. And I realize that my directions are a little less than professional. Here is a another tutorial from Beneath My Heart. Her skirt is the same style as mine. Sometimes it just helps to see a few different tutorials. You can also make the skirt with no ruffle (which uses way less fabric) or make simple pleats on the corners. To see more photos of my utility sink makeover check out my Laundry Room Reveal!