Elastic Belt Tutorial

I recently bought this black dress – I figure everyone needs a plain black dress.  But then I wanted to add some POP to it.  I knew it’d be a belt – they’re all the rage.  Well, then I found these shoes at a thrift store:

So I knew it needed to be a pink belt.  First I decided on using some of this super cute fabric I got from Poppy Seed Fabric – I grabbed a bunch that had any form of pink as a main color:

Then I dyed some wide elastic – elastic is so cheap – perfect!  You buy it by-the-yard, just like fabric. (I didn’t want to waste a whole pot of dye so I threw some shoes in too – I’ll post that later today….)

The dye pot was looking more purplish than pinkish, so I pulled the stuff out early, after about 20 minutes – but the purple rinsed out and left the pink, so that was good.  I probably could have left it in for another 20 or 30 minutes, but oh well, I didn’t want it to be too neon, so better safe than sorry.

 Side note, when adjusting items in the pot, you WILL dye your hands.  This is before I stuck my hand in another couple of times…..

Alright, moving on to the Elastic Belt Tutorial.  Make various fabric flowers (my tutorial, with video, for fabric flowers) and then place them where you want them on the belt.  After laying them all out, hot glue them on one by one – – for the ones that stick off the belt a bit, be sure to one put glue where it will touch the belt.  For dimension, I stuck some pink tulle on as well.

Here’s the close-up of my flower arrangement:

Then, finish the ends of the belt.  Since I had my hot glue gun out, I glued the ribbon on – – first, put a row of glue on the elastic and stick one side of ribbon down:

Then fold like a present and glue the other side down, so the edges are all wrapped on the inside.

The glue is holding great, but hand-sewing the hook and eyes on through hot glue was tough, so if I did this again I would use the sewing machine and sew the ribbon on.  But either way works.  So as I just mentioned, to finish, you just hand sew on a few hook and eyes.  (Side Note – I thought about buying a big ole bra at a thrift store and cutting off it’s back hook piece and using that, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy it!)  Here’s the back view of my belt:

 
Just the thing I needed!!! Voila:

(um, ignore the bucket – that’s our castle playhouse-in-the-works)