12th century belt for my 12th century wedding dress – pearl embroidery .2

Last time I already added a good amount of pearls to my new 12th century belt but I was far from being done with my pearl embroidery at this point.

The bezants with the additional pearl embroidery look really great but I had the feeling like I could add a little bit more and do better…

And this is what I decided to do in order to complete the look of the bezants and the pearls a little bit more – enjoy! 😀

You might remember the picture above from the last posting. I really liked the overall look of the pearl and metal combination but somehow I had the feeling like this part wasn’t complete yet.

It took some time but soon I was able to determine what was causing this disturbance. This bare holes of the bezant, through which I was able to attach the bezant to the belt, had still a rather unfinished look – they looked quite empty and incomplete – like something was missing.

Suddenly I had an idea how I could fill this empty space quite easily. Well, what would be better than to simply fill this void with some more pearls? And this is what I did:

To make sure that the pearls wouldn’t be too vulnerable to get caught in my sleeves or anything around me, I decided to use smaller pearls this time. They still stick out quite a bit but have much less body and surface than the bigger pearls. In order to sew the smaller pearls to the belt, I again used a doubled thread.

When sewing single pearls like this into place you want to leave about a little bit of thread – about half the diameter of the pearl – between the fabric and the pearl before you start pulling in the thread – like you can see on the picture above. This will help to place the drill hole of the pearl horizontal to the surface when the thread is pulled tight and hides the drill hole at least a little bit. If your drill hole is showing above this horizontal level – just keep your thread tight, insert the tip of your sewing needle into the drill hole and move the pearl slowly until you have it in the desired position. 🙂

Last but not least I added some extra simple stitches at the back after each pearl to be sure that the thread will stay firm in its place and the pearls won’t start moving when I wear the belt. 🙂

And here a picture of the bezant with all holes covered: 

Well, I really think that the bezant already looked great before I added the additional pearls to cover its holes but now I definitely loved the look! Somehow it looked more complete and finished. 🙂

And here a sneak peek at the progress of the belt till now:

Yes, this is a quite long belt with many bezants and much more pearls on it as it needs to go twice around my hips. It always takes like forever to finish every progress step but it’s definitely worth it. 🙂 

Well, this 12th century belt project is still far from being finished but I definitely love the progress so far and will add much more pearls soon… 🙂