Anthro Knock-Off Belt

Hello Sew Much Ado fans (and of course my regular readers as well)!  I am so happy that you are here today!

I was thrilled when Abby asked if I wanted to participate in her copy cat challenge.  I’ve just been getting to know Abby better through emails these past couple of months, and she is so sweet.  I love her blog, and have you seen her cutest doll pattern ever?  So adorable!

 

In my search for something I wanted to try and re-create, I found this Anthropologie belt called Radiating Ruffles.  Isn’t it pretty?  A week ago, it was still available for purchase for $58.00.  It is no longer available, and I am kind of bummed that I don’t have a picture of it on the model, but it sure looked pretty.  You can still see the picture that is below, and the price here if you’d like to check it out (updated to add:  it says it was $30.00 on that link, but last week it had the correct price on Anthro’s webpage which really was $58.00).

I do wish I had brought the lace further in towards the middle, but now you can learn from my mistake, right?  The Anthro belt was made with a leather lace I believe.  We’ll just use eyelet lace and dye it.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

-eyelet lace, enough to almost go around your entire waist—you can see that I used some that had the ruffles to either side.  Mine is about 2” wide, and it was purchased at Joann.  You could definitely use smaller or wider lace, and instead of getting the double edged kind like I did, you could get the one-sided edge kind and just meet them in the middle and sew together.

-single fold bias tape, same amount as lace

-skinny belt—I purchased mine at the thrift store for $1.00

-E6000 glue, or other strong glue

-tea bags or other dye—I actually used both

The benefit to using tea is that I only had to add about 1 Tbsp. of the dye to get the desired color. 

You can see below the lace and the single fold bias tape are darker.  The piping was dyed with only tea bags, the others had Rit dye added into the water.

I just threw in the tea bags and dye into some salt water and let them dissolve a bit before adding the lace and single fold bias tape.  Then I boiled them for about 5-10 minutes, threw it in the wash and let it dry.

 

Determine how long you want your lace to be, depending on the length of belt you have.

 

On my lace, there was a right and wrong side. I’m holding the right side.

 

Treat the ends of the lace with fray check. 

 

You don’t have to fold your ends over, but I wanted to just in case the fray check didn’t work at some point.

Now, fold under the end of the single fold bias tape, and line up over the middle of the wrong side of the lace.  You want the pretty side to end up on the front of the belt. 

Sew closely to the edge of the bias tape, keeping it in the middle of the lace the entire time.

 

Sew the other side of the single fold bias tape.

Put your belt on and buckle it how you will be wearing it.  Remember where you buckled it, because see the gold buckle below?  That is my middle of the front and you want to know that is the middle so your lace isn’t off-center.

So fold your belt in half with the buckle in the middle.  Fold your lace in half also.  Start gluing the lace from the middle of both the lace and the belt, then work down either end of the lace.

One end will most likely be longer than the other end.

That’s it?  Easy!

The dress maybe wasn’t the best choice to show off the belt, since it bunches in the front, but I like my shoes given to me by a friend, so I’m still including this picture :) .

Thanks for letting me participate in your awesome challenge, Abby!  I’ve had fun looking at the entries already and can’t wait to see more!