14th/15th Century Velvet Wrapped Belt

This belt was a gift for Master Celestria Alexandre d'Amiens for her induction into the Order of Defense in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). It is inspired by stars in the night sky and was my first attempt at making a velvet covered leather belt.

The Process:

After a little bit of research, some time studying my own leather belt, and lessons learned from a velvet sword hanger my partner made many years ago, I had a plan. I acquired the pewter pieces from Billy and Charlie's, the silk velvet from Silk Baron, and the leather belt blank from Amazon. I was careful to order a belt blank that was 1/8" smaller than the belt size the buckle and chape were designed for, knowing the velvet would add width to the overall piece. 

I checked my layout and measured the locations for the mounts and button holes on the leather blank. The leather needed to be pre-punched, but the velvet did not, so I set about punching small holes for the mounts. 

The belt was longer than the velvet fabric was wide, so I cut two strips and sewed them together to make one long one. Each strip was about 3.5x the width of the belt. This gave me enough material to wrap the leather, turn under the edges, and have some wiggle room in case I didn't have the fabric quite centered on the leather. 

With the velvet prepared, I used some thread to tie the end in place and keep it from slipping while I worked on the mounts. I tried to get a tidy fold in at the top since this is where the belt buckle would go and the stitching of the back closed would start. 

I pressed the first mounts through to really set the fabric in place. I found using an awl through the leather helped me locate the holes and do less damage to the velvet when pushing the mount posts through. 

I did find that the sharp pewter mount posts tended to catch the velvet backing fibers when pushed through the fabric. This caused some bunching of the velvet on the front of the belt. To fix this, I gently pushed the fibers off the post on the back and teased (gentled pulled) the fabric back into shape on the front. 

I cut each of the mount posts fairly short (about 1/8" sticking out of the back of the belt) and then used a small, rounded hammer to tap-tap-tap them flat. Billy and Charlie provide detailed instructions when you buy their mounts, but the gist is, lots of tiny hits is better than a few big ones. 

After all the standard mounts were secured, I trimmed the excess velvet and started to sew the back closed with little whip stitches. When I got to the belt holes, I had to treat them differently because they needed to go through all layers, and not be covered up by the velvet on the back. 

I punched larger holes for the belt holes and actually punched through the velvet as well (instead of awling). I then pressed the pewter belt holes through the belt and sewed the back closed around he posts of the holes. 

Unlike the mount posts, I did not trim the backs of the holes. I borrowed a set of rounded daping tools and used progressively larger ones to gently widen/flatten the pewter. 

I had trouble with the chape end of the belt and in my frustration failed to take any more progress pictures. The chape and buckle both go on in similar ways. The belt is slipped in to the opening or the flat is placed on top of the belt. The little rounds in the picture above are drilled out and pewter posts are pushed through the whole thing. The posts are shortened and flatted in the same manner as the mounts. 

Final Product:

The belt came out beautifully, despite some chape-based struggles. And it's so soft, I want to pet it all the time. Total hours were in the 15-20 range. 

If I were to do this again, I would make one small change. I would order a thinner leather blank (I used 6-7oz and could have used 5oz) or shave down the one I purchased across it's whole length. I did shave this one at the chape and buckle end because I struggled to get the belt to fit in the pewter pieces. A thinner leather overall would not detriment the strength of the belt but would make it easier to work with and easier to buckle. 

Overall, I'm super satisfied with this project and I was so happy to be able to gift it.