An Easy Way to Make a Lovely Leather Belt

Leather is too thick to sew with a normal sewingmachine. This is an easy and handsome technique to work with leather without having to sew it. you use crochet instead!

You'll need a basic knowledge of crocheting.

Let's see how it's done!

You'll need:

-a piece of leather (look for a shop on the internet and see if they sell leftovers. I've bought this piece at www.boomsma.nl)
-a socket punch
-a crochet needle (0,3)
-yarn (I used a smooth cotton)
-pattern paper
-scissors
-tape
-ruler

First, measure your waist, then take of 10 cm. For example: in my case that would be 65cm - 10 cm = 55 cm.

Notice that it's not a rectangular piece of leather; it's slightly round. how to achieve this?

Draw a rectangular shape on a piece of paper. it should be half the length of the desired beltlength. (in this case 27,5 cm)
height: about 5 cm.

Cut this piece in three even pieces.
Arrange them on a folded piece of patternpaper as shown in the picture. There should be about 2 cm space between the pieces.

Draw a smooth line and cut. now you have a pattern!

Put the pattern on the leather and cut.

To make this easier, you can use tape.

Now use the socketpuncher to make holes in the leather.
The distance between the holes should be about one cm.

And now we crochet!

Begin somewhere in the middle of the Belt.

Make three single stitches in each hole, then one slipstitch. And so on and so on!
Do this all the way around the belt.

At the ends, I made a triangular form with single stitches.
You go back and forth, skipping the two last stitches at the end of each row.

When you're down two one single stitch at the end, make a cord of slipstitches. As many as you like. At the end of that you can make a little ball like I did or you can attatch a bead, a bell, or... well, anything you like.

Using this technique, you can make anything yo can think of!

wallets, keyrings, giraffes, poofs, jackets, anything!

I hope yo enjoy it as much as I do :)