Making a Dip Waist Edwardian Belt

Hello! Hi friends! If you're new here, welcome. In this video, I'm going to show you how to make a dip waist 1900s belt based off of a free pattern that I created that you can download at the link in the description. I only made it in four sizes, so they're like very spread out. I'll put them right here. It's super easy to change it a few inches. This is actually not my final pattern. This was like one of the tests that I did, but I'm going to show you how I put it together. This is not like the only way to put it together, but I like it and it uses some contour techniques to make it look really nice and smooth. But if you want to change the size of the pattern, basically you can just kind of cut it to make it shorter, or you can cut it and like slide it in. If you want to make it bigger, you can either like add space, like just draw space onto the end, or if you don't want to freehand this shape, you could take the end, excuse me, you could like take this part and trace it out a second time and cut it out and then tape it on so that you can maintain this slight curve. So you have options. It's really easy to change the size, but yeah, let's get into like how I actually put this together because it was a super fun little, I'm going to stop waving this piece of paper around. It was a super fun little hand sewing project. I think I did it entirely by hand and it took about two hours, like start to finish. You could absolutely do this in like 15, 20 minutes by machine if you just wanted to like bag line it and get it done. But I think it's a really fun little hand sewing project to do if you have the time or if you like hand sewing. So yeah, let's get into it. So a little bit about like the design and the era. This is a slight dip waist belt. So it goes along with that S-curve silhouette of like the 1900s in like Western Europe and the United States. So it goes down a little bit in the front. It doesn't go right across your waist. You can wear it with a shirt that has a lot of volume so you get that pigeon breast look. You don't necessarily have to, but yeah, that's kind of what this design is. Because of the nature of a dip waist belt, it sits very much on top. It's not constricting at all, which of course makes sense with period undergarments once you have a corset. You don't really pull in anything on top of that because the corset like is the full structure and you're just layering layers on top of that. But it gets a little bit interesting when you're doing history bounding without historical undergarments for those of us who like to wear historical clothing and not do the full thing. This belt really has to sit on top, partly because it's a dip waist belt. It's not actually going around the smallest part of your waist because if it did, it wouldn't be able to be slightly lower in the front. Here's one of the finished ones. I did one in black and one in pink so far. These are slightly different sizes because I was kind of figuring out what worked. But yeah, because it goes slightly lower in the front, if you pulled it, it would kind of stick out because there would be too much fabric. I ended up not needing to add any boning to these because they do really just have to sit on top of your outfit to do their thing. So they only need to be stiff enough to hold their shape on top of your outfit. They're not really supposed to take any strain. Yeah, your corset is supposed to do that. So I used a pretty stiff canvas. Depending on the fabrics you use, you might want to add a little piece of boning here, but I'm pretty sure that adding boning on top is historically accurate. It's not always built in like a corset on garments and art corsets. Not that you have to be historically accurate, of course. But yeah, I think it is actually historically accurate to basically finish a belt and then decide if you want to bone it and put boning on if you would like to do so. So yeah, that's that. But getting into actually putting it together, you only need about, depending on the size, around a quarter of a yard of some kind of stiff canvas. I used a blend chest canvas. And then depending on the size, again, somewhere between like a quarter and a half a yard of your outer fabric and then some lining fabric. I'm just using a scrap, which is about the same amount as the outer fabric. So not a whole lot of fabric, which is great. But yeah, so I started by cutting out my canvas and I cut it with zero seam allowance. I cut out the canvas with no seam allowance and then I cut out my outer fabric with seam allowance and I basted it on top. And I did this around my tailor's ham so that it would have a curve and everything would lay really nicely around my body and there wouldn't be any weird puckering or pulling. So I just went ahead and basted them together. And then after that, I folded all of the edges in and basted it again. And the corners, I just kind of folded in the corner at a diagonal and then folded in both sort of straight sides. They're not quite straight, but they're... One of them is straight and one of them is very slight curve. At this point, it's a great time to sew on your hooks and eyes to actually close this belt. I did this on the first one I did that I didn't film because it was kind of the prototype. On this one, I basted on the lining first, so you'll see that. But yeah, this is a great time to sew on your hooks and eyes. And I really like doing this because you get to sew on your hooks and eyes just kind of quickly and messily and just make sure that they're strong enough and then cover everything up with the lining. So I like doing that, but you can always sew them on at the end if you forget or if you just would rather do it that way. And then I cut out my lining with some seam allowance and basted it on. And again, I tried to baste this in the curve so that everything would be laying really nicely when it's around my body. After basting down the middle, I went in and cut the edges down. I like to cut it with a larger seam allowance and then baste the layers together and then trim down the seam allowance and kind of use the canvas as a guide for my pattern. I just find that it's easier, especially with the curve. It's not a super drastic curve, so if you do cut it with like a 3-8-7 inch seam allowance or something, you're probably going to be okay. But I like to cut it more like a half an inch and then baste it in the curve and then trim it down a little bit more and do the clipping and everything. At this point, the outer fabric is basted on. Nothing is really sewn except for the hooks and eyes. And then you baste the inner fabric on and then you baste the edges under and then you go ahead and connect it all by sewing all the way around the edge with a slip stitch or a whip stitch. And yeah, this is a super easy project. That is literally it. If you wanted to embellish it at this point and add some trim or add some beading or some lace or anything that you want to add, you can do that. I don't know why I haven't made one of these before. They're so fun and they're such a great little accessory to add to an outfit and I feel like they add a ton of interest and just kind of an accent and I just really like them. I didn't realize how much I would like these belts until I made them. Also, Snappy Dragon is coming out with a video about exactly this era of fashion, but specifically about the suffragette movement. So I know a lot of you, previously when I kind of briefly mentioned that the suffragette movement was kind of white supremacist, some people got mad about that, which was to be expected, but she is going a lot more in depth than that. So that video is either already out or coming out right around the same time that this video is coming out. And then I'm doing a video with her where we go even more in depth into that. So that will be on her channel. Stay tuned. But here is the final belt. Wait, let me just go throw on my chemise and my corset and my drawers and my other chemise on top because I don't really have a corset cover that works and my skirt and my blouse and my belt and my shoes. One sec.