I made a sketch for the belt, and turned it into four pattern pieces. Do not imagine anything fancy going on here, I used my basic belt pattern, modeled one after a Bella belt that I liked and used a pen to fill in the curls and stuff. The catch is that I wanted the belt to have a lot of cut-outs, creating peek a boo holes to the skirt worn underneath. This will allow the costume to be very versatile, depending on the skirt worn with the bra/belt.
I could have integrated the swirls with the belt but choose not to for now. Figured it would be easier to handle the swirls underneath the machine if they weren’t integrated in the belt yet. I cut all pattern pieces from unbleached densely woven cotton, as I have a ton of that stuff in my fabric stash. Heavy felt would have been easier, but it would also have meant buying more supplies, something I try to avoid. I cut a third layer from molton to provide a bit of padding and body to the belt, then did some freehand sewing on the machine to baste all those layers together. This is the belt base after stitching everything together. All four parts are still separate, but it was more fun to show them layered to give you an impression of the end result.
Creating the pattern took me about 1 hour, creating the base about 2 hours. I’m trying to keep track of the time I spent on this costume. I estimated 40 hours when I started but it might be more like 50-60 hours in the end.
This is it for now, tomorrow I’ll blog about covering the belt base in fashion fabric.
Kyria's Costumes 