Easy Maternity Belly Band

The inevitable has started to happen.  Some of my skirts are getting hard to zip up all the way. I have been eye-ing material and patterns on pinterest on how to make a belly band so I can stay in my regular skirts as long as possible.  As I am just about to enter my 2nd trimester and my skirts are starting to risk falling off if I unzip them any more without some aid!! 
When my husband and I were in Manhattan I spotted a clearance rack for 50 cents at a store- that is my kind of clearance!  There wasn't a lot to choose from, just XL knit shorts.  Wait a minute...XL knit shorts could make a perfect belly band!  I checked them over and they seemed to have just what I needed, and for 50 cents, how could I at least not give it a try! 

I loved the results:  In about 10 minutes the material went from  shorts to belly band, and all for 50 cents!!

 Here are the shorts before they got transformed.  

I just cut the legs off, the part where they were sown together.

I planned to have the waist be the part that showed as the band, so I didn't have to make any changes to that because it fit perfectly.  But it left a lot of excess material with the part that I wanted around my belly.  So I just added darts- 

2 in the front and 3 in the back, was just what it needed to stay up but not be too snug, so it will fit a growing baby and belly.  The knit material makes it stretchy enough to grow with, but the darts made it so it wouldn't fall off.  I trimmed the material inside the dark so there wouldn't be any extra bulk. 

And...I was DONE!!!

I love how it turned out.  :-) 

This is the side where the zipper is and there is no bulk or bumps, even though the skirt is unzipped halfway.  Perfect!