Bracken Crafts- 100 garments: 1987 vintage belt fixed

Wednesday, 22 March 2017

1987 vintage belt fixed

I bought this elastic corset belt in about 1987 at the very latest. Possibly earlier because I seem to remember it being Adam and the Ants in the charts when I went out wearing it. It was the end of the New Romantic/ Goth era. It came I think from Miss Selfridge. Its a black bonded leather edge with a metal buckle and elastic. I always loved it but probably about the mid 1990's the elastic became so old and stretched it was no longer wearable since it was so big and baggy it was actually bigger than my hip measurement. I wish I had taken a photo of the old belt but I never did. It was just a stretched mess though.

But I kept it. Because I am a sentimental fool. Of course I always new it was fixable but I never really expected to get round to it. Then at Christmas I stocked up on elastic off Ebay and bought this extra 1m for this belt. The elastic is 12.5cm (5inches) wide. My buckle though, or rather the bonded leather it is attached to is just 12cm wide so slightly smaller. It took me a while to work out exactly how to do this. there is the obvious bit of unpicking of the old stitching.

So once I had unpicked the old stitches I threw away the old elastic and I inserted the new elastic between the two sides of the bonded leather bit. I am sure there is a proper name for the piece I am talking about but I have no idea what it is so sorry about that. To sew I used the heaviest needle I have and sewed every stitch by hand, as in using my hand not the machine pedal to make the needle go up and down through the belt, to sew the stitches. It was very slow and I currently am having physio because of problems with my hand so was probably not the most clever thing for me to do. It took two days for my hand to recover!

But here is the result:

This is the front.

Unfortunately I never took all the old bits of cotton out and then sewed over them which means they are pretty much stuck in place! You can just about see where the old stitches join the new.

It took ages to sew this back together.

But eventually I did it.

This is the back

I didn't quite line the stitches up with the old stitch holes on th back but it won't be seen.

To get the elastic to fit since it was slightly wider than my buckle I folded the edge under at the bottom.

I am so happy because after all these years and several house moves I have my old belt back. And it is even in fashion! And it actually fits me better because the original belt was always a little too big and this one works.