We've all been there. People learn you love to sew and they start bringing you clothing items to repair. It comes with the territory. At first I was defiant. I'm not a clothes type of person. One time I tried to make my daughter a dress and I ended up throwing it in the trash. Looking back I was probably using the wrong type of material for the pattern. Le Sigh.
Slowly but surely I've been allowing myself to mess with clothing repairs. My sister-in-law brought me a shirt with a hole in the underarm, I'm not sure I did it the "correct way" but I sewed it up. My husband brought me his gym shorts with the lining falling off. I re-attached that to elastic waistband. My daughters Kindergarten readiness teacher pulled out a shawl for me to fix one visit and I had it fixed less than an hour later.
So when my other sister-in-law asked me if I could sew belt loops onto my nieces softball pants I didn't even flinch. "Sure" I said "That shouldn't be a problem". And to my surprise it wasn't. The first thing I did was turn to the internet. Youtube to be exact. I was surprised to learn that this was going to be as simple as creating bias tape. If you're a quilter than this will be a piece of cake for you.
Choose a fabric that matches your pants and cut it at least two inches wide. The pants were a black stretchy material and I found a piece of scrap black fabric that would work. I wasn't sure how long I wanted each belt loop to be but I eventually landed on 3 inches which would mean I would need to cut my fabric two inches by fifteen inches.
2. Create your bias tape by folding your fabric in half and ironing. Open your fabric back up and fold the two sides down to the center fold then fold back down the center.
3. Sew down each side of the bias tape to tack it into place. You have some creative liberties here so choose to sew as close to, or as far away from the edge, as you want. I decided to sew as close to the edge as I could.
4. Now you are going to choose how wide each of your loops should be. My sister in law told me that the belt was 1.5 inches wide. At first I cut my strips 2 inches long but I soon found out a lot of fabric length is lost when attaching them to the pants. 2.5 inches also proved to be too short, but third time and 3 inches proved to be just right. I got a lot of practice making bias tape in.
5. The scary part is coming up fast-attaching them to the pants. So since these pants were going to be for a four year old I grabbed a pair of my daughters pants to compare and decide where I wanted each belt loop to be. I stuck pins in the softball pants to "mark" the spot. It came out five total. One in the center of the back, one at each side seam and two in the front on either side of where some pants might have a drawstring or zipper.
6. Starting from the back center I started sewing on the belt loops. I simply folded the edge in about a quarter of an inch and lined that up with the edge of the waist band and sewed a straight line across the edge of the belt loop. Now I went over the belt loop multiple times to be sure it would be a secure fit. Then I did the same thing on the south end of the belt loop. Be careful not to accidentally sew into opposite side of the pants.
7. Once you do this with all the belt loops you are done! It was really so much easier than I ever thought possible.
I really am starting to enjoy the challenge of doing more clothing repair and enhancement type tasks. I enjoy the challenge and learning new things while enhancing my sewing skills. If you've made belt loops before did you use a similar method? What has been the craziest thing someone has asked you to repair for them?