So in keeping with the holiday spirit I'm now showing off the little bag I made for my girlfriend's mom. She's an avid ceramicist so I made this bag to keep her tools.

Over the summer she got me a golf bag to replace my old rundown broken one. (Oh how I wish I had a picture of the old one. It was kind of embarrassing. It looked a little something like this except with a gaping 2 foot hole in the side from which clubs would occasionally fall out.)

I figured she'd really like it if I reused the leather to make her a gift. I was originally thinking about just a leather belt until my girlfriend actually came up with the idea for a tool pouch for her ceramics equipment.

How I made it

The exterior comes from three 4 by 17ish swaths of faux leather/canvas pulled from different intact parts of the bag. I sewed them together lengthwise and rounded the edges for the zipper to go around smoothly.

The zipper came from a mid 90s computer case that I condensed to create a 2010s computer case. In that project, I had removed a section which left over a small ribbon of zipper that I could reuse. This didn't leave too much edge for the zipper so my stitching had to be pretty precise to hold.

On the inside I wanted to have little tool holder straps for ceramics tools to fit in. I didn't know the exact sizing because I couldn't find a casual way to bring up the dimensions of her ceramics tools without arousing suspicion. So I guessed that I could put strips in two orientations and most things would fit somehow.

Interestingly I learned that I would have to add decorative stitching on the outside to continue my lines because otherwise it just looked really bad.

I'm really pleased with the result. Sewing is a new skill to me, but it's worth it to learn.