I recent­ly made a dress out of a pil­low­case inspired by this tuto­r­i­al (more on that dress lat­er — I’m going to make one big post of my recent dress­mak­ing adven­tures :D) and I real­ly want­ed a red belt to go with it. I real­ly like the tex­ture of this star stitch coin purse pat­tern so I decid­ed to mod­i­fy it a bit to make a belt. 

So the pat­tern isn’t real­ly my orig­i­nal — I owe much to Fruit­ful Fusion, the blog where I found the free star stitch coin purse pat­tern, and for which I’m very thank­ful because I learned a new stitch! :D I think it works real­ly well for a belt because it’s tight and stur­dy, so I doc­u­ment­ed what I did in case oth­ers are inter­est­ed in mak­ing a belt too.

I used some ran­dom red yarn in my stash, which was gift­ed to me along with three oth­er box­es of yarn so there was no label, but it should be a sport weight or light worsted weight. I used a 3.5mm hook to make the stitch­es tight and stur­dy. I also used two 1/2″ but­tons, plus nee­dle and cro­chet thread to sew on the but­tons. Belt is about 1 1/4″ wide.

Abbre­vi­a­tions used:
ch — chain
sl st — slip stitch
yo — yarn over
hdc — half dou­ble crochet 

To start, make a long chain such that when wrapped around the waist the two ends meet.

ROW ONE

First stitch: insert hook into 2nd ch from hook, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into next ch, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into next ch, yo and pull up a loop… 

(First stitch con’t) … yo and pull through all 4 loops on hook, ch 1.

Sec­ond stitch and on: insert hook into the ch 1 just made (arrow 1 in above pho­to), yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into the base of last stitch on the base ch (arrow 2 in above pho­to), yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into next ch, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into next ch, yo and pull up a loop — 5 loops on hook…

(Sec­ond stitch con’t)… yo and pull through all 5 loops on hook, ch 1.

Repeat sec­ond stitch to end.

*Note: if you have an odd num­ber of stitch­es in your base chain alto­geth­er, you will have one extra stitch in the end. But I would­n’t wor­ry about count­ing the ch to make sure there’s an even num­ber. At the last pat­tern repeat just insert hook into that last ch and pull up a loop, so there will be 6 loops on hook, then pull through all loops and ch 1 as usual.

ROW TWO

ch 2, turn, 2 hdc under each ch 1 space to end.

Note that I work the hdc under the ch 1 space from pre­vi­ous row, rather than into it, to avoid hav­ing a ridge between the rows of star stitch­es. The pic­ture below demon­strates where I’m insert­ing the hook.

At the end of the row, work 1 hdc into the top of the turn­ing ch of the pre­vi­ous row.

ROW THREE

First stitch: ch 2, insert hook into the 2nd ch from hook, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into the first hdc, yo and pull up a loop…

(First stitch con’t)… insert hook into the next hdc, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook into the next hdc, yo and pull up a loop — 5 loops on hook…

(First stitch con’t)… yo and pull through all 5 loops on hook, ch 1.

Sec­ond stitch and on: insert hook in ch 1 just made, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook in base of last stitch in hdc, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook in next hdc, yo and pull up a loop. Insert hook in next hdc, yo and pull up a loop. Yo and pull through all 5 loops on hook, ch 1.

Repeat sec­ond stitch to end. In the last pat­tern repeat, insert hook in turn­ing ch of pre­vi­ous hdc row, yo and pull up a loop. Yo and pull through all 5 loops, ch 1.

Row 4: Repeat row 2. Don’t fas­ten off.

But­ton loops: worked over the short end of the belt.

ch 1, sl st in end of row 4, ch 5, sl st in the same space as pre­vi­ous sl st, sl st in end of row 3, sl st in end of row 2, ch 5, sl st in the same space as pre­vi­ous sl st, ch 1, sl st in end of row 1. Don’t fas­ten off.

Sew but­tons onto the oth­er end of the belt (as usu­al I refer to this method to cre­ate more space behind the but­tons for the but­ton loops).

Try on belt and read­just the num­ber of ch in the but­ton loops if nec­es­sary. Fas­ten off, weave in ends, wear with dress or tunic! :D

 

As usu­al if you have any com­ment or ques­tion please feel free to drop me a note! Have a hap­py Wednes­day! :D