I kinda stuffed up this week with my post over at The Sew Weekly, I read the challenge wrong, it was a Refashion under $10, I did the— under $10 bit and not the refashion, I’ll have you know that this sort of thing is a very typical trait of mine—not reading through things properly, it gets me into trouble sometimes but for you here this isn’t an issue. This week I have DIY’d a very favourable piece of awesome, a corset belt designed by one of my all time favourite avant garde designers Ann Demeulemeester.

I’m a big fan of Ann Demeulemeester along with Rick Owens, Haider Ackerman just to name a few.  Ann Demeulemeester designed this belt and I thought I’d give it a go with this piece of leather that I know I’m super lucky to of found at a local garage sale, $2.99, bananas right? it was one of those moments where when you pull out your coinage to pay you do it in a nonchalant kinda way, you don’t want them to pick up on the mistake and change it to a more realistic price. I certainly was nonchalant I was rather proud of how casual I was happy to tell the lady that her flower bed was real pretty— as a distraction. Anything for a bargain right? Her garden was very pretty.

Ann’s corset belt is a lot longer, something I wished of mine but didn’t have the length in the piece. I am super happy with how it turned out, and do know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea which makes it more appealing to me. You can probably work out how easy it was to make, a quick measurement of the bust for the front panel and strips rotary cut to the width of the buckles.

This is definitely my favourite photo, the back of this corset belt is crazy awesome, I freakin love this. It’s obvious that I’ve machined the leather strips using a leather needle however, Ann’s seems to be in one piece, you do what you can with what you have I guess.

The bag of buckles I found for $4 they’re all terribly tarnished, and I’m okay with that, it kinda blends in with the rustic look of the leather and keeps the challenge under the $10 limit. I used a leather hole punch to place the holes for the buckles at 20mm intervals. To mark these out for a good fit I put it on backwards and marked out the first hole for each buckle, deliberately zig zagging the buckles down my back.

It is a task to get into, hubby has to buckle me in, just like a corset needs help I guess. I can wear this lower as a belt, backwards or on the side of my hip it’s a matter of playing around with it and trying it on with different clothes to see what works best. I should also tell you that the leather is brown, here’s a colour shot.

God damn I’m hating on my hair at the moment so tempted to go the chop and what’s with this face? It’s probably the face of—hating on my hair. Not impressed? The corset belts good though, I think so anyway, its no floral dress that’s for sure. I’ll named this one Cherry Cola from Eagles of Death Metal. Album- Death by Sexy. Super danceable, hip swinging shoulder twitching kinda stuff. I’m off to go dance in my new Corset Belt… cha cha cher-ry Co-la!!

Oh yeah! I made knickers you should totally have a look, and outside of my sewing world is My Week In Pictures

Happy Sewing.