Hand Made Pilates Mat Bag

I take a Pilates class 2 to 3 times a week and love it! It's really hard, but has given me such wonderful strength! I bought a really good mat from my instructor that came in an ugly plastic bag. I've been carrying around that plastic bag for over 1 year. It really held up well, but was starting to show wear. I discovered that I had a Jo-Ann's Fabric store relatively close so I decided to go in and see if I could find some material to put a bag together. I found this great remnant on sale for $7.98. I have only used my sewing machine for card making so I decided to try my hand at sewing on fabric. I did not have a pattern, I just measured the circumference of the mat (for those of you that don't remember from 7th grade geometry it's diameter x ╥ = circumference.) {I didn't remember either, lol}. I used that for the length of the body. I sewed that into a circle, inside out of course, and then sewed the bottom panel on. The hardest part was making the draw string which I had sewed inside out but what a pain to turn it right side out! I thought I was smart and sewed a piece of string inside the tube so I could just pull it through but the string broke :( So then I stretched out a wire hanger and put a hole into the one end and hooked the hanger through. I was then able to pull it right side out. Next I sewed a pocket around the top for the drawstring to snake through and added a handle to the outside for carrying. All in all, it took about 4 hours, but that was because 1) I'd never done it before, 2) that darn drawstring sucked up a lot of time trying to figure out how to undo the mess I'd gotten into and 3 ) I forgot to leave space on the outside seam for the handles to I had to open up two areas to insert the ends.

Here's the full view of the bag...mind you this fabric & pattern was extremely forgiving:



This is the top view showing the bag opened:



And...wait for it...closed up:




A view of the bottom of the bag:



The old bag I used for carrying my mat:



Me...although you can't tell from the picture...{happily} throwing that bag into the garbage:




Thanks for hanging out for such a long post. Have a wonderfully creative day!