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You are here: Home / DIY / Sewing a Yoga Mat Carrying Strap with Leather Shoulder Pad

August 9, 2016 by: Lura

Sewing a Yoga Mat Carrying Strap with Leather Shoulder Pad

Making your own DIY Yoga Mat Strap with Ribbon and Leather

step-by-step for making a yoga strap

Here’s a little bit about me that you may not know about me. I have mentioned here before that I’ve struggled with chronic pain. I’ve done some of the most invasive pain relief therapies available for interstitial cystitis and I always find myself coping better when I practice yoga. I have been practicing yoga for almost nine years now. The recreation center at JMU (go Dukes) had yoga classes all through the day and I decided to take one at night because dark and so no one could see my foolishness. After that first class I was hooked and yoga is something that has been there for me since. My Mom saw how much I loved it and  for Christmas one year she made me this purple and gold (JMU colors) yoga bag that I used forever.

When the time came to upgrade my yoga mat, I went for a thicker, wider mat and my beautiful bag no longer fit my mat. 🙁 Since then I’ve been using a shoe string as a shoulder strap to hold my mat and thankfully it finally broke. I’ve had the ribbon and supplies to make a new strap fro quite a while but I never found time…until now.

Supplies Needed for DIY Projects

Decorative Ribbon (Zig Zag Ribbon I chose)

Heat’n Bond Iron-on Adhesive

Scrap Leather

Aurafil 50 wt. Blossom Pink Thread

Sewing Machine with Large Button Hole Capability 

Iron

Quilting Ruler

White Marking Pencil

Instructions

Making a Colorful Yoga Mat strap Using Bright Ribbon and Leather1. Unroll the entire spool of ribbon and iron flat on warm setting. Fold ribbon in half long ways by connecting end to end. Iron crease to create a half mark. Essentially, you will be doubling the ribbon to make it stronger.

2.  Place a strip of iron-on adhesive to the center of the ribbon and place the other half back over the iron-on adhesive. Note: You can see the crease made with the iron right above the 2 in the photo. Adding iron-on adhesive isn’t 100% necessary but it keeps you from having to use pins to old the ribbon together while sewing it.

3. For a cleaner look, fold the ends of the ribbon inward before sewing. Use an iron to help old the crease.

4. Start by sewing a top stitch on the folded under end of the ribbon first. Once you reach the corner of the ribbon with the sewing machine, leave the needle in the ribbon and turn the ribbon to start sewing down the long edge. Do this for each corner.

5. Once the entire ribbon length has a top stitch, back stick to secure the stitch.

This is a full tutorial showing how easy it is to make your own yoga mat strap using ribbon and leather.

6. Measure one inch inward from the edge of each end of the ribbon. This is where your button holes will start.

7. Switch out the current sewing foot for the button hole foot. Follow instructions from your sewing machine manual for this.

8. Set the button hole foot the the largest button hole possible. You want to make sure the ribbon will be able to slide through it. You could even change the color of the thread here. I think that would be super cute but I chose to keep the Blossom Pink color.

9. Sew button hole following directions with your machine. Thankfully, my machine will sew one with the touch of a button.

10. Once the machine is finished sewing the button hole, you will need to use a seam ripper to open up the center of the hole. Before you open the hole, add a pin at the top of the button hole to stop the seam ripper from continuing through the seams at the top edge of the button hole.

11. Slowly rip the seam with the seam ripper and use scissors to clean up the strings and pieces.

PROJECT FAIL…..

So when I finished I looped the ribbon through the button holes on each end. This made the circle parts for the rolled yoga strap to sit in. To be honest, I hated it so I didn’t take any photos. The ribbon wasn’t long enough and the strap wouldn’t fit over my shoulder. So I decided to add a piece of leather to the middle to make it longer and to create a nice, soft piece to rest on my shoulder.

Here is how that part of the project went down. I have a bin full of scrap leather that I received from a local shop (they were just going to throw it away). I chose a really pretty navy leather and used an iron to flatten it. Smells heavenly by the way.

scrap leather upcycle

12. Once it was flat I traced the ruler 2 inches x 12 inches.

13. Repeat step two right under it.

14. Cut the piece out, leaving the line in the middle UNCUT (that middle white line will be our folding line

15. Use binder clips to fold the leather piece in half and sew the long end. You will sew inside out and then flip the leather.

Pain. In. the. Ass. but doable.

16. LEAVE THE TWO SMALL ENDS UNSTITCHED.

Now, cut the stitched ribbon down the middle and insert the ends of the cut ribbon into the leather piece.

Piecing and stitching leather to ribbon LuraLumsden Blog

Once the pieces are in place, stitch a square on each side (example of the solid squares). Then stitch an X with the box ensuring that the ribbon tucked within the leather is secured within the leather.

Make your own yoga strap. Way cheaper than Lululemon yoga mat strap Lura Lumsden Yoga Mat Strap

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Comments

  1. 1

    Amber Oliver | In The Loop Blog says

    August 11, 2016 at 8:42 pm

    Upgraded from the shoestring! This post looks amazing! Thanks for such a through tutorial.

    Reply
    • 2

      Lura says

      August 15, 2016 at 10:22 pm

      Thank you for reading. 🙂

      Reply

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