The UN-tutorial

Wanna make yourself a yoga mat bag out of a spare pillow case?
Well, you should probably go find a competent sewer to show you how. But if you really like to swear and want to strengthen your relationship with your seam ripper, read on.

Sigh. When it comes to process vs. product, this one falls in the latter category--it turned out OK, but man, the process was not pretty.

A little background info: I have finally found a yoga class that a) fits my schedule b) isn't too hard or too easy c) isn't being taught by an angry teacher (I know, an angry yoga teacher? yeah...it wasn't pretty). So now my yoga mat, which had been hanging out at the back of the closet needs to be relatively accessible. After finding the black cat curled up on it every time I turned around (because cats have a magnetic attraction to anything you don't want them to sleep on), and noticing that the sticky surface of the mat was perfect for collecting cat hair, I figured it was time to protect the mat.

Sounds easy, yes? Take a big tube and make it smaller, with a drawstring and a strap. Ha!

Step 1: Locate spare pillowcase, make sure mat will fit:

Looks good.

Step 2: Cut away excess the fabric and use it to make the a shoulder strap:
Folding and pinning the strap...

...and sewing the strap. I "chose" contrasting thread because I couldn't find the white. And because I wanted to make sure everyone could see my crappy stitching.
Wow! This is going pretty well! Maybe I've shaken off that sewing curse!

Oooops. Spoke too soon. Should know better than to have confidence when it comes to sewing.

Fuck up #1: Sewing the tube for the drawstring before adding the buttonholes for the string to come out of.

Time to get out the seam ripper!

Hmm. Where is that thingy? Time to locate the seam ripper.

I sent the girl critter on a quest to find it which she enjoyed because it meant emptying out the four separate boxes of poorly organized sewing crap.

The contents of just one of the four boxes. (Oh look! There's the white thread too!)

Luckily the girl critter located it because from here on out, the seam ripper is the main character of our sordid little craft drama:
So with our purple protagonist, I ripped out edges of the drawstring tube. Yum yum, munch munch. (I found it helpful to imagine the seam ripper as hungry. Then at least I could feel good about feeding it.)

Fuck up #2--Remembering how to do buttonholes. You'll notice that there is a break in the photo documentation of this process. At this time I was too busy swearing a blue streak and ripping/feeding the seam ripper to remember to take photos.

Despite practicing making buttonholes on a spare scrap of fabric, I still screwed up 3 times when trying to make them on the drawstring tube. (More swearing, more snacks for the seam ripper!)

Step whatever: re-sewing the drawstring tube.

Step whatever+1: sewing the side seam.

Fuck up # whatever: sewing the two completed buttonholes into the side seam.

(Insert favorite curse words, start brandishing seam ripper like a fencing foil.)

Try again to sew the side seam without enclosing the much-suffered-for button holes.

Half success! Also known as: Fuck up # whatever+1. This time only one buttonhole was trapped in the seam.

(Sigh. Consider alcohol. Then realize that drunk sewing is probably dangerous.)

Riiiiiiiiip! Munch munch (even the seam ripper is getting full/sick of this). Finally succeed in sewing a seam in which both button holes are not trapped.

Thread through ribbon for draw cord.

Close up of crappy buttonhole with drawcord.

Bag is finally done.
It doesn't look like it tortured me for three hours now does it?

For $12.29 I could have saved myself the grief, not exposed the girl critter to some very creative language and bought a bag that is ventilated (so your mat can breathe?) and has the added bonus of not looking like an old Ikea pillowcase.