Creating Things Day Ten - Belt Loops For A Uniform

I am an usher at my church. Google it if you don't know what that means.

We have to wear uniforms, hideous, hardly-ever-flattering uniforms.

I've already done some alterations.

I've shortened the length of the skirt, shortened the sleeves, and moved one of the buttons.

But I wanted to add belt loops because the belt won't always stay in place.

And the belt is crucial for holding the waist of the dress at my natural waist. Otherwise the dress pulls on my hips.

Here is the dress. It's really pretty awful, so I didn't take a full view shot.

I needed some fabric to make the belt loops.

I had a lot left over that I just happened to hold onto when I altered the dress before.

Once I cut it down to size, I headed to the ancient sewing machine to stitch up the fabric.

May I add in here that I was playing this whole thing by ear? I wasn't sure what to do, but I kept moving forward.

Once I had the fabric stitched, I cut off the excess. Next, I had to turn it inside out.

It was too tiny to use the skewer. Plus, I wasn't actually stringing anything.

So I grabbed a safety pin. I pinned one side and pushed it through to the other side.

Once it was turned right side out, I cut the fabric in half and voila, two belt loops.

Then I laid them against the belt to make sure they were the right size.

Luckily they were the right size since I hadn't been doing any measuring.

I pinned the belt loops to the area I wanted them in and tried to figure out exactly how I would stitch them down.

I got the first one stitched down. I did this by hand of course. I didn't want to fight with the sewing machine on such small stitches.

It looked okay, but it gave me a great idea for how I was going to do the other side.

I stitched the other side by tucking the ends under so it looked more like a real belt loop.

I much prefer the other side, but it looks pretty good all around.

I looped the belt through to make sure it was even and looked the way I wanted it to look.

I'm pretty pleased with the results. I took this last picture without the flash so you could actually see the belt loops.

You may notice they look a bit different from one side to the other. I may re-do the first side one of these days.