Free Tutorial, Pirate Corset Belt

Easy Sewing Project

My four year old daughter is going on a Disney Cruise next month with her grandparents and one of the dinners has a pirate theme.  This was the dress I came up with for her to wear to dinner, and it has multiple uses as well.  The dress can be worn separately as a "Minnie Mouse" dress and the chevron fabric is actually a separate skirt that I used to layer over the dress to complete the "pirate" dress look.  

To make the corset belt I measured my daughter's waist, which was 20".  I decided to cut it 4" shorter to leave some space for the ribbon to be tied across her waist, therefore I cut the belt fabric 16" wide by 4" in length (x2 pieces).  To make the ruffle, I used a 3" x 60" piece of red fabric and to make the loops I used four pieces of ½" wide ribbon cut about 3" long.  The satin ribbon pictured above is what I used to thread through and tie the belt together.  

I folded the two belt pieces in half and rounded the bottom corner on the open end, then folded that section up and cut a curve at the top as well to make the top section of the belt match the bottom section.  (This is optional)

Folding two pieces of ribbon in half, I pinned them on the left side of one of the belt pieces, the right side of the belt fabric facing up.  I sewed them in place, using about a ⅛" seam allowance, then repeated the same steps to add the loops to the right side of the belt as well.

The next step was to make the ruffle.  I pressed the short sides in ½" towards the wrong side of fabric, then folded the fabric in half lengthwise, wrong sides together and pressed.  I used a baste (gathering) stitch about ⅜" in, then repeated another stitch just above that one for extra support to pull and gather the ruffle.

After gathering the ruffle fabric, I pinned it onto the right side of the belt piece, making sure that the ruffle was facing inward.  I slightly overlapped the ends of the ruffle so that it looked like one complete piece.

After adding the other belt fabric onto the top, right side down, I started to think that I probably should have added interfacing to make this fabric firmer…but I wanted it done and I was being lazy. :)  If you are doing this project, adding interfacing would probably make sewing the two pieces together easier.

The last steps were to sew around the belt about ½" in, and leave a 4 or 5" gap to turn it right side out, then tuck in the fabric and ruffle and sew a top stitch around the inside of the belt.  Somehow my loops decided that they wanted to not face straight!  They were fine once I threaded the satin fabric through to complete the belt.  And that was it!

Here's what the "Minnie Dress" looks like without the other pieces added to it.  I used the Hailey PDF sewing pattern to make this and just made a solid skirt instead of the strips.  

And here is a sneak peek of the skirt I am currently working on making a pdf pattern for!  I added the skirt as a layer over the "Minnie Dress"to help complete the pirate dress look I was going for.  

And the corset belt just makes the pirate dress don't you think!