Saturday, April 3, 2010

Making a Bedlah vii

Now I'm well on the way to making the belt.  It's quite a fiddly design with the silver ruching drape, so it's taken quite a bit of pinning and pressing to get it to this point.













The back of the belt is still 'under development'. I'm redesigning it a little, trying to get a deeper dip and raising the sides up a bit higher, so that at the front I can create more of a dip. Initially I'd thought I'd only dip at the back and come around up higher in the front, but I liked the lines across the hips better this way.
This is before I started to pin the pleating down - I'd originally just stitched the pleats every 10 cm or so, but had to unpick several of them so I could drape the back.  I have pressed them, which in retrospect I don't think I should have.  So I'll have to wet them a little and steam them into ruching rather than pleating.

This shows you how I pinned the ruching so that it fits  - stretching it out for the dip, then bringing them in tight over the hip.  I've now stitched underneath and along each fold (so you can't see the stitching) to hold the ruching in place.  It's not usual to do this with ruching, but given that they're really more like soft pleats, it holds them in place better.
Detail of the pinning.  Don't do this unless you're feeling particularly picky!  If I was doing this again I'd probably revert to the old gathering stitching and forget about the pleating - but hey, what's a little time spent doing something you enjoy?!