Because I basically live in athletic clothing, I have a lot of interest in being able to conceal carry well with that type of apparel. So I often search for whatever new approach companies are offering for this. I guess it’s because of this interest that I’m often advertised stuff from the company Arrowhead Tactical, which makes athletic clothing designed specifically for concealed carry. You can do your own research, as they have various offerings. I just want to focus on the idea of their bottoms.
After some research, the concealed carry aspect of their bottoms largely has to do with an internal belt loop system that allows you to wear a belt on the inside of the waistband. Arrowhead has its own proprietary belt to do this, but you can probably get away with other belts. Of course, there are some other features and benefits to the Arrowhead bottoms, but personally, I’m just not in the market to buy $70 shorts or $100 sweat pants, before any sales are applied. Especially considering that I’d need multiple for use throughout the week.
After some thought, I told myself that I can just sew on belt loops to the bottoms that I already own and be basically in the same position, while not blowing any money. So, I did just that.
Of course, doing this is dependent on having a sewing machine, which I already have. Again, the goal is to add belt loops to some bottoms. For this, you can approach this project in various ways, but after some experimentation, I’ve found that what works best for me is to use a stretchy elastic band that I already own. I actually went to the store, bought fabric, and made my own belt loops, which can give you very good results depending on what fabric you use and your sewing abilities, but personally, the elastic band works well for me because it’s pre-made, so I don’t have to do any extra sewing, and the elastic does help to fit different-sized belts.
Again, the elastic band is premade made and all I had to do was cut it down to size. After some trial and error, I found that a 2.5-inch strip works best for my application. You can definitely make it a few 1/16 of an inch shorter, but the more perfectly sized you make it, it’s just going to be harder to get a belt in and out, especially considering that many edc belts are going to have areas of different thicknesses. To me, leaving some extra space makes the whole system more convenient to use.
Once you have your loop strips cut out, it’s just a matter of actually sewing them in place. I went with a zigzag stitch with a very short stitch length. There certainly are other ways to tack a belt loop in place, but I did it this way with the loop flat, simply to make this process as easy and as fast as possible, because I wasn’t sure if this was something that I would even like. If you’re serious about this, you can certainly research belt loop stitching for yourself.
If you look at some normal bottoms, they’ll usually have 5 belt loops. Two in front and three distributed across the back. For this project, I did a little more customization in terms of where to put the belt loops based on how the bottoms were already laid out and made. I wouldn’t say that my position is traditional, so I’m not going to give any recommendations here.
During the sewing process, even though I had the belt loops precut to length, it doesn’t hurt to stop and double-check the size to make sure that the loops will actually fit your belt. I knew that I was going to base the loops around my Aegitech belt, so I made sure that I was able to easily get the belt in and out.
Once you get all 5 belt loops sewn in place, you’re done. Just clean up any loose threads and try the bottoms out with your belt and gun setup.
I’ve experimented with this process a few times now with external belt loops like you’d get with traditional bottoms and with internal belt loops as you’d get with the Arrowhead Tactical bottoms that sparked this whole project. The internal belt loops are going to be better looking in my opinion because you’ll likely be adding material that doesn’t match your original bottoms. So having them inside hides the mismatching material. However, from my experience, the internal belt loops are a bit more finicky to deal with because that’s just not what we're used to, and also because our belts are just not made to be used that way. So it just takes a bit more time to set everything up. But again, it does look good and not unsightly if your shirt gets lifted up.
In terms of the idea and project itself. It allworks. The belt loops absolutely function as they should and allow me to conceal carry in any bottoms. But is it worth doing, or is it any better than some of the other products that I’ve shown, like the Leisure Carry Clip-On Belt system, or the Phlster Enigma, or any other system? Well, that really depends on how you carry. I think there’s a time and place for the various systems, and I will continue to rotate through them. I haven’t found the perfect system for me yet.
However, I think that if you own and know how to use a sewing machine, this is certainly the cheapest approach to concealed carrying in any sort of bottoms. You just need 5 belt loops, the belt you already own, and you’re golden. Super simple project that I can definitely recommend if this is what you want to do.
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