So, with a sewing table kind of full of things, it’s a lot easier to focus on some of the small elements instead for this costume, so my next project was the belt. I have a ‘tablet weaving’ belt from another SCA costume that I could wear, but while I was at Tandy Leather I picked up some leather (1″ wide latigo) for a belt as well, and thought it would be nice to make this up too.
I started off with the reference photos from costumes I’d seen before (read back to some of the other Viking garb posts) and figured that I wanted to do a single -ring belt style. Now, I read that women’s gravesites weren’t found with buckles (where men’s gravesites were) suggesting that women wore tied belts instead of those with metal buckles, but I still like this idea…
My leather is just the 1″ latigo, which comes really long – plenty to go around my waist and allow for part of the belt to hang down.
Next I grabbed a ring and some leftover trim (very much like the mock-tablet weaving of my other belt) and tried out a few options – aiming for something that could be tightened, done with relative ease, and wasn’t too bulky.
I fussed around with this for a while, using a pin to substitute in for the rivet that would hold the leather, trying on the belt and seeing how knotting it could work. I left the belt mock-up in this configuration until I could make up the real thing… just in case!
Next I had to break down the latigo, so it would hang better. When I got it it was VERY stiff, and wouldn’t bend/knot in the way that I wanted, so I just worked the leather by hand over and over (while watching TV) to break it down a bit.
My next step was to shave down the fold where the belt would attach to the buckle. At first I thought I would be able to use long rivets and keep the thickness of the belt itself, but after I took this photo I ended up shaving down the whole fold. The latigo is pretty thick, so there was a lot to work with.
I also used my Speedball art lino cutter to trim down the sides of the belt, adding a bit of decoration.
From there I just folded the belt around the ring, marked and punched holes for the rivets, and set the rivets to attach the ring to the belt.