Tutorial - How to make a Lego mat bag

This was one of those “oh this won’t take long” tasks that turned into a cussing match!

A week or so ago, a friend approached me to see if it was possible to make a Lego mat/bag for his children. Now, I have a pretty big soft spot for his kids, and will take any opportunity as an excuse to go fabric shopping, so off I went!

I ended up in the furnishing fabric section. The dimensions we were talking was 150cm diameter, so I needed wide fabric. I found a nice bright patterned fabric for the outside, then went questing for something plain for the inside. I stumbled across some velvet. I ummmed and ahhhhed for a bit. It was super soft and squishy and would be really nice to sit and play on. But I thought it might be a bit hard to work with. I got it anyways.

So with my two fabrics, the next steps should have been easy.

Making circles of fabric. To do this I fold one piece in half, then half again. Measuring for the folded corner, mark out the radius, then cut. For this bit I managed to measure too far, and went over the selvage. I had to go back and do this step again, taking another inch off the edge. Simple fix, but lesson learnt. Always check your measurements!

Once you have one giant circle of fabric, lay it on top of the other piece of fabric. Cut around it. Now you will have two giant circles of fabric.

Now for the casing. I thought this was going to be easy. I was even patting myself on the back when I remembered there was a way to work out the circumference of a circle, so I could work out how long my casing strips need to be! (radius times pi) But it took me two goes! The first casing I made was from the velvet and only 2.5inches wide. This was too bulky and not wide enough to comfortably take the cord, and resulted in a lot of unpicking and cussing. The second time around I cut the casing from homespun (much thinner than the velvet) and at 4.5inches wide. This allowed more room for the gathers to sit. If I made this again, I would actually consider pushing this out another inch, as the gathers are still bunching up a bit from the bulky mat section.

Even with my silly mistakes this was a fun make. I learnt a few things (especially how gathers need room to do their thing). This is going on my “list of things to make for kids birthdays”