sewing ribbon belts

here I am in a narrow belt of my Granny Squares on black.

I posted a while ago with that great photo of the mannequin at Vogue Fabrics wrapped in circles of ribbons around the waist, and today they wrote about me writing about them on the Vogue Fabrics blog. Occurred to me that I hadn't shown you the belts I have been making all fall.  Here they are on display at the TSA conference in Nebraska last month. (sorry the photo is so very yellow!)

To make a belt, I cut 1 1/4 yard (that is about 45") of ribbon, and select the same length of a coordinating grosgrain ribbon in the same width.  May Arts offers a great grosgrain ribbon in the 2.5" width, which is particularly hard to find.  (Most of my ribbons are 1 1/2" wide, and it is quite easy to find 1 1/2" grosgrain in a variety of colors) One could also back a belt with fabric, or with another coordinating LFN ribbon, of course.  I lay the ribbons back to back, and sew carefully down each side as close to the edge as possible. When that is done, I heat up my woodburner pen tool, lay a metal ruler across the end and cut carefully with the hot knife, which evens and seals the cut so that it will not ravel. Repeating on the other end, I then lap one end though the buckle about 2", fold it down and sew in place by machine.  I take it over to the ironing board and steam press it on the wrong side, using a medium heat setting.  Polyester ribbons will shrink rather dramatically from the application of direct heat so I don't press on the face of the ribbon, but a good pressing on the back makes it lay flat and gives it more suppleness.