Months ago Celeste and I were out shopping and she spotted a belt she liked, one of those ruffly elastic ones with the bows on the front. She almost bought it but it looked wrong when it was stretched because it lost the cute ruffle. I found a bunch of left over elastic in my stash when I cleaned it out so I thought I would have a go at making her one instead.
What I ended up with:
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What you need:
Start by measuring around your waist and cutting two pieces of elastic. You can adjust how much elastic you want depending on if you want the belt to be tight or just a bit snug. Leave around 5cm more than you think you need so the ends can overlap for the closure.
Lay out the elastic on the fabric and measure so you can cut 2 strips which are twice as long as the elastic and with 2cm extra for seams on the top/bottom.
You should have something like this:
Cut 2 pieces of lace which are as long as the fabric. Lay the first piece of fabric face up, place the lace along the edge with the nice edges pointing towards the middle…
Then place the other fabric on top, good side down so it sandwiches the lace. Mmmm lace sandwich…
Pin in place if you need to. There shouldn’t be much lace sticking out the sides if any. Now overlock or sew down each long side to form it into a big tube.
You can see when I lift up the top layer of fabric, the lace is being sewn into the seam between them. When we eventually turn it all inside out it will poke out the top and bottom without needing to be top stitched.
One side sewn and flattened out so you can see what I mean a bit better…
Stitch the other side too and you should end up with a tube like this:
Open up the hole at one end, turn it all inside out and flatten it. If you want it to be flatter you can iron it and top stitch each side.
Now thread both pieces of elastic through and make sure they don’t twist along the way. If you need to you can use a safety pin in the end to push them through.
It should be all bunched up like this:
Making sure the elastic isn’t twisted, overlock down each side to hold it in place.
Now you have a big stretchy ruffled thing…
Hand stitch a couple of snap closures or hooks on to the ends.
If you want you can fold the edges into seams to hide the raw stitching but as it’s going to be covered by the bows it doesn’t really matter.
Now stitch on some bows to one side and you’re done!
Taadaaa finished!
Now fingers crossed Celeste will like it and I’ll be able to show you it all being worn ^_^ |
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